


Wants and Needs

by StormDancer



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, But not Carts/Richie's, Figuring out how to become healthy, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Jealousy, M/M, Past Drug Addiction, Past Injuries, Pining, Possessiveness, Post-Divorce, Unhealthy Relationships, therapy is great kids!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-17 18:36:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 52,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20625665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormDancer/pseuds/StormDancer
Summary: Fuck it, Carts has texted,offer still open?Mike swallows.Door’s unlocked.There’s no response, but a few hours later, there’s an email in Mike’s inbox with the itinerary for a flight from LA in two days. No return trip.Or,Jeff's reaction to a life crisis is still a good sulk and Mike would still rather be a hermit at his lake with no one but Jeff and his dog, but they aren't the same people they were ten years ago. And maybe that's a good thing.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Showing up seven years late with 50k for a pairing no one's thought about in five years: enjoy, sorry I binged a lot of fic and had feelings about the tragedy of Mike Richards! 
> 
> General warnings: this is a fic about Mike Richards, which means that it mentions and depicts, though does not revolve around, opiates addiction and CTE/past injuries and head trauma. I tried to depict them as respectfully as I could, but I am not at all an expert and in some cases attempts at accuracy were sacrificed for story, I'm sorry. 
> 
> Things that I did not at all attempt accuracy at: the lifespan of a dog. That I'm not sorry about. 
> 
> This fic also depicts and uses Jeff Carter's IRL wife and kids; obviously I know nothing about them and have used nothing more than their names and general birthdays, and wish his marriage and family the best. 
> 
> In general, I know nothing about anyone in this fic at all, even less than usual; basically everything I know about anyone in this fic is from fanon and so probably wildly inaccurate. I tried to stay closish to known dates, but that's about all. 
> 
> That being said--enjoy some, as my beta said, assholes in love figuring out how to be healthy! It's all written, and will post every two days, so next chapter will be up on Tuesday, 9/17.

The text comes from Danny Briere, of all people.

_How’s he doing? _

Mike blinks at the phone. Is that some weird third person way of checking up on him? Coming from some people he’d think so, but that’s not Danny’s style. And besides, it’s been years since anyone was checking on him.

_What? _He replies, though, because he’s curious despite himself. The lake is quiet in the morning anyway, and he’s already coaxed Arnold through his morning walk, as far as he can get nowadays. So it’s not like he has anything better to do.

_You don’t know? _Comes the text back, and Mike rolls his eyes. Arnie woofs, like he gets it.

_Know what? _

_Carts is getting divorced_, Danny says, and Mike breathes in, sudden and harsh.

* * *

Mike hadn’t heard. Mike hadn’t heard a lot from Carts, not since the shitshow that was his last years in the NHL. Not nothing, but—for two people whose lives had been lived in parallel for so long, they had very little to line up with, nowadays. Jeff was out in LA, with his beautiful wife and kids and a nice position in player dev with the Kings, as a thank you for his long service. Mike was in Kenora at the lake, far away from any ice that wasn’t natural, with an ache in his head that won’t go away and an itch for what he knows can stop that ache that he can’t give in to.

It’s better that way, probably. It wasn’t Jeff’s fault, the whole shitshow—years of therapy later, he could admit that, taking ownership and responsibility and all that bullshit—but it wasn’t not because of Jeff, either. They’d been supposed to play together forever, to be together forever, but Jeff had been just getting better and settling in and Mike had been slowing down and hurting and—well. And.

And Jeff had gotten married.

Mike had been there, of course. Stood up right next to Jeff, watched him get married, watched that stupid, brilliant smile light up his face. Maybe he was a masochist, because keeping a smile on his face was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do, but like fuck was he letting someone else be Carts’ best man. He was fucking up most things, at that point, but he hadn’t fucked that up, not yet. And he had—he did—he wanted Carts to be happy, to get everything that made him happy. There had been times, quickly quashed but impossible to kill completely, when he’d thought that might be him. But if it wasn’t—he’d make damn sure Carts got what was.

And apparently he’d looked grumpy but not like he’d rather be stabbing himself in the eye, so he counted it as a win. Carts had hugged him, after, lit up as bright as his stupid hair, looking bewildered by his good fortune, and for a second Mike had remembered what it felt like to hand him the Cup, what he’d yelled then, how that had all been Mike’s. His blushing bride had hugged Mike too, kissed his cheek, thanked him.

“I’ll take good care of him,” Meg had told Mike in a loud whisper, with a fond smile at Jeff that somehow included Mike, like it was an inside joke that Jeff needed taking care of. It’s not like she was wrong. A spiteful part of Mike wanted to tell her, all the shit he’d taken care of Jeff through, how he’d gotten Jeff to this point.

Mike had managed to smile, though. “You better,” he said, and hoped it sounded like a joke. She’d laughed, at least, though Jeff had shot him a sidelong glance, because he knew Mike better than anyone, at that point. He didn’t say anything, though. They didn’t. Not about most things, but definitely not about that.

“Yeah,” Dewey had said, appearing out of nowhere and throwing an arm over Mike’s shoulders. “Otherwise Mike’s taking him back, right?” He’d laughed, loudly, clearly already a little drunk. Everyone else had too, even Mike.

Then Mike had gotten very drunk.

Then he’d gotten a headache, and taken some pills to make it stop. It was already easy to do.

* * *

And now Jeff was getting a divorce. Jeff with his beautiful home and great kids and that smile like him and Meg were all they needed. Jeff who had been so in love. Jeff, who was—

Mike switches to a different text window. It’s not empty—there are happy birthdays, merry Christmas’s, a few little nothings when things come up, because you can’t get rid of twelve years with a trunk full of pills, apparently. But it’s easier, like this. Distance, or whatever. His therapist had talked about it.

But he’s still a masochist, apparently, because he types out _okay? _And hits send.

It’s—Mike does some quick mental math—still early in LA, even for Jeff, who was always an early riser. But Jeff must be getting a bunch of these sort of texts, from people he’s talked to in the last nine years. He doesn’t expect anything back, just sets his phone down and goes to deal with lunch.

But he’s barely a few meters away when he hears his phone buzz.

_Been better_. From a Jeff Carter not in Columbus, that’s paramount to his head falling off. Mike’s still figuring out what to say to that when another text comes in. _You heard, then? _

_Danny B_, Mike reports. He can do that.

_Great_, Jeff replies, and Mike can fill in the gaps—great, everyone knows. The NHL, even retired players, is a ridiculous gossip factory.

Mike looks at his phone. He’s not sure what to say now. Even at its strongest, their friendship wasn’t about comforting words over texts. Even during what had, before, been the hardest part—the trades—it had been drunk phone calls and talking about everything else, about what a bitch Jeff was being and how much injuries sucked and everything around the fact of how much they missed each other. They’re not twenty-five and stupid anymore, but Mike still doesn’t know what to say. He’s not great, in writing.

He could leave it there—he’s done his duty, Jeff knows he’s there if he needs anything—but it’s Jeff, he’s not going to ask, unless he’s had a total personality change in the ten years.

_Need anything? _He asks. Almost laughs at himself. Some things never change.

_For people to stop asking me that_, Jeff snaps back, and Mike knows that tone—sulky and bitter and sad, because Jeff likes to wallow when he hurts. _It’s like someone died. I have so many casseroles. Do people think I forgot how to cook? _

_They know you can’t be trusted alone_, Mike retorts. That’s always been the joke, anyway. That Jeff needs someone to take care of him. It’s probably stopped being funny, after Mike proved that he was the one who actually couldn’t be trusted alone.

_Fuck you_, Jeff sends back. _How’s the lake? _

It’s a clear deflection. Mike can’t tell if it’s because Jeff’s doesn’t want to talk about his shit at all, or with Mike. It’s fine either way.

He wanders over to the window, snaps a picture, sends it.

Jeff snaps one back of the ocean—Atlantic, not Pacific, which explains why he’s up.

_You’re in NJ? _Mike asks.

_We thought it would be easier here. To tell the kids. _

_Was it? _

_No. _

Mike looks at that one word. He remembers—fuck, in Columbus, when Jeff was sulking with everyone else and blowing up his phone. The vicious, angry satisfaction that Holmgren could separate them but couldn’t take this away, that Mike was still the person who got all of quiet Jeff Carter’s words. Something even meaner, that Jeff was so miserable, that Mike was settling in on his new team and Jeff needed Mike. Mike might be in love with Jeff, and by that point he’d accepted that that was a constant, but Jeff needed him.

And now it’s just one word.

Mike wonders, with a viciousness that surprises him, if Jeff has someone whose phone he’s blowing up now. Not his wife—ex-wife’s—he guesses.

_We’re going back to LA tomorrow to meet with lawyers_, Jeff goes on. _So that’ll be worse. _

_More casseroles, probably. _

_Ugh. Why casseroles? _

Mike snorts. _Who knows. Maybe so they can come over and spy on you. See how you’re doing. _

_Fuck_, Jeff replies, and Mike—he thinks about Jeff running away to Sea Isle after the trade. Thinks about everything he knows about Jeff, and how he processes bad news. Thinks about how this is probably a bad idea. But—it’s Jeff. Mike’s still not out of the habit of taking care of him, apparently.

_You could always get away. Somewhere they can’t find you. _

_If Nash can find me in Sea Isle, I think anyone can_

Mike snorts. _Not what I meant_, he says.

Three dots appear, then linger. Then, _Do you mean that? _

Mike looks around, and the quiet, solitary house, at Arnold sleeping next to the couch. This was the dream, for so many years—after the Cup, after everything, this was what he had wanted. To be left alone, with his lake and his dog. Even before the Cups, sometimes, this was what he had wanted. To just be left alone.

But, _if you need it_, he tells Jeff. If Jeff understands what he means, then he’ll mean it, Mike bargains with himself. That’ll mean—something. It won’t be healthy, but it’ll mean something.

_We’ll see_, Jeff says, which doesn’t mean he understands and doesn’t mean he doesn’t. _Maybe after we sign and figure out the kids. _

_Arnie would be happy to see you_, Mike says. Sighs. That’s—it’s better like this, probably. Mike does stupid, stupid things when Jeff is in his life. He shouldn’t restart that cycle.

_I’d love to see him too_, Jeff replies, and Mike can’t tell exactly who he means.

He sets down his phone, and goes to make lunch.

* * *

For a week, he doesn’t think about it. It’s easiest. It was just him checking in with an old friend going through a tough time, because he’s a dick but not a monster, and that’s it. A few other people ask him about it, like they think he’s still Jeff’s keeper, but it’s usually people he can put off with a few platitudes. No one who really knows them, knew them, thinks that that’s true anymore. The times when if you cut one of them, the other bled, are long gone.

Then, about a week later, Mike comes out of his workshop where he’s been working on a chair to see a text notification on his phone. He makes himself wash off his hands before he unlocks it.

_Fuck it, _Carts has texted, _offer still open? _

Mike swallows. _Door’s unlocked. _

There’s no response, but a few hours later, there’s an email in Mike’s inbox with the itinerary for a flight from LA in two days. No return trip.

* * *

“Carts is coming,” Mike says, after he’s sat down in the armchair, because he refuses the therapy couch.

Dr. Farella, Mike’s therapist, is a tall woman, about ten years older than Mike, who looks like she could kick his ass without batting an eye. Ten years later, Mike’s still not good at this therapy shit, but he thinks she’s the best he could ask for; she doesn’t take his crap and gets that he’s not made for talking about his feelings or whatever.

Now, she raises her eyebrows, which means she’s very surprised. “Jeff Carter?” she asks, her voice crisp. Her shirt today is a muted-for-her green, which means it only makes his eyes hurt a little. Her shirts, Mike’s thought, are the worst thing about her.

“No, the other Jeff we’ve talked about,” Mike snaps. Stupid therapy questions are one thing, but come on. “Yeah, Jeff Carter.”

She hums a little. “And he’s coming here?”

“Yeah. To the house.” She doesn’t say anything, so he keeps going. “He got divorced, and Carts—likes to run away and sulk when shit happens, so I said he could come here and do it.”

“Very kind of you,” she says.

Mike snorts. “You’d be the first person to call me that.” He leans forward, braces his arms on his knees. “Did I totally fuck up?”

“Define fuck up.” She writes something down, though, which always makes Mike feel like he’s showing off for the draft again.

“It’s Carts.” Mike lets his head drop, just for a second. “He hasn’t exactly always been healthy for me.”

“Why did you ask him, then?” she asks.

Mike shrugs. “I know what Carts needs,” he says. “And—I dunno. He got what I meant, when I didn’t say it.” She’s still watching him. He bristles. “He was my best fucking friend for twelve years, I can give him this.”

“Then why are you worried?”

“I’m not worried.” Mike runs a hand over his face. His beard is a mess, probably, but it’s not like anyone sees him. “It’s just going to be weird, seeing him again. I haven’t seen him since—since the last time I played the Kings, I guess.”

“So ten years ago?”

“Yeah.” Mike shakes his head. That’s fucking weird to think about. “So, tell me. Have I fucked it up? Should I tell him not to come?”

“Do you want to?”

“No, but.” Mike glares at her. “That’s not what I asked.”

Dr Farella sets down her clipboard. “I’m impressed you reached out.” It doesn’t sound like a compliment.

“What, that I can help my friend?”

“That you wanted something to change. You know I think you’re ready for that.”

“This isn’t change, I’m just helping a friend.” She doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t look like she believes him. Which is fine. He doesn’t pay her to believe him, when he’s not sure he’s telling the truth himself. He has to be, though. His life is good, now; he can’t mess that up. “He’s my friend,” Mike repeats. He can make it just that again. Ten years and a fuck-ton of therapy must have been enough time to get over Carts. “I can help a friend.”

“You can,” she agrees. Her face is serious, though. “I know this might be challenging, but that’s not a bad thing.”

“I don’t mind challenges,” Mike agrees. It’s maybe an understatement. “I just…” He shakes his head. “I don’t want to go back.”

“I don’t think you will. And you know I’m just a call away, if you need anything.” They both know Mike won’t call, but he guesses she has to say it.

* * *

Mike doesn’t pick Jeff up from the airport, or anything. He and Jeff discuss it, like adults, and Jeff decides to rent a car. Unstated, but definitely there, is that it’s been years, and starting off trapped in a car together for the few hours from Winnipeg might not be the best way to start. Not with all the baggage between them.

So Jeff rents a car, and Mike putters around the house, neatening it like Jeff needs to be impressed and then getting annoyed at himself for doing that, until he hears the car pull up.

Mike looks around his house one more time. Takes a breath. Doesn’t let himself look in the mirror.

Then he gets up and goes outside.

Jeff’s getting his bag out of the trunk of the car. Mike can only see his shoulders, a bit of his hair, the line of his jaw—cleanshaven, at this point in the summer—and something still catches in his chest, but it’s manageable, maybe. Jeff is here. Mike can handle this. He’s an adult, and who he was ten years ago, twenty, was a lifetime ago. He can be normal, about Jeff.

Then there’s a bark at his side, and Mike glances down to see Arnie’s dragged himself up, looking more animated than he has in months because of course he still remembers Jeff. And then Mike looks up and Jeff is looking up too, over the edge of the trunk, and he’s grinning, and—this was a bad idea. It might have been a lifetime ago, but a lifetime isn’t enough to get over Jeff Carter’s stupid, happy smile.

Mike makes himself move. Makes himself go down the stairs, to where Jeff is standing. Makes himself see—closer, Jeff looks good but changed, not in NHL shape anymore, a little softer, less lanky. And he looks…tired. Not the good kind of tired, the long-playoffs-run kind of tired, but the kind of tired that aches.

But he still smiles at Mike, like it really is good to see him.

“Drive okay?” Mike asks.

“Eh.” Jeff shrugs. “Better than LA.” They’re the first words Mike’s actually heard Jeff say in almost a decade. It doesn’t feel like an event. It feels—normal. 

“What isn’t?”

“True.” They just—look at each other, for a moment. Despite everything, despite the years and the anger and everything, Mike can feel something in him relaxing, with Jeff here. Jeff brought out the worst of him, sometimes, the parts of him that are mean and possessive and spiteful and envious, but he’d also been Mike’s best friend, once. He’d been the one person other than his family who Mike didn’t have to be someone for—who knew all of those bad parts of Mike and didn’t care, who believed in him anyway.

Then Arnie barks again—he’s made his slow, painful way down the stairs, but he’s eager as he bumps against Jeff’s legs.

“Oh, hi, boy!” Jeff drops to his knees, and he laughs. Mike blinks, and—Jeff’s twenty and petting at a puppy, both of them all big paws and too-long limbs; Jeff’s twenty-five and wrestling with Arnold on the floor of their LA home, laughing as Mike comes in and sees them both there; Jeff’s twenty-eight and holding Arnie’s collar as Mike drives to the airport to go to Manchester, identical hangdog looks on their faces.

And then Mike blinks again, and it’s just them now—older, slower, still laughing.

“Told you Arnie would be happy to see you.” Even if it all goes to shit, maybe it’s worth it for this, for Arnie to have seen Jeff again.

“I didn’t think—how old is he?”

“I don’t question it.” It’s the one thing in Mike’s life that’s just good, and he’s not overthinking that.

“Probably all the fancy living, out here,” Jeff jokes, and stands up. He’s so fucking tall. It’s irritating. “And you spoiling him.”

“I’ve never spoiled him,” Mike mutters. He doesn’t spoil his dog. He maybe caters to him a little now that he’s older, but it’s not spoiling.

“Uh-huh.” Jeff doesn’t sound convinced, but also like arguing would be too much work. 

“You can come in,” Mike says, instead of arguing that any more. “Need a hand?”

“I’m good.” He has a suitcase and a duffel bag. But he’d always been a light packer—Mike can’t tell how long he’s planning to stay.

They go inside. Mike glances at Jeff, but if Jeff’s clocking anything different, he doesn’t say anything. He just walks through the house easily. Which makes sense, because he’s been here before, plenty of times.

Mike watches Jeff. He can’t help it. He doesn’t know how he feels, with Jeff in his home, taking up the space there as easily as he ever had. But he knows he can’t not look at Jeff.

“Do you want something to drink?” Mike asks, gesturing to the fridge. Jeff shakes his head. Now that he’s inside, whatever momentum seems to have carried him this far has cut out; his shoulders slump, his fingers drum against the handle of his suitcase.

“I’m good.”

Mike surveys him for a second. Then, “Why don’t you take a nap?” he suggests. Maybe that’ll stop Jeff from looking like he’s about to keel over.

Jeff blinks. Then, “Yeah,” he agrees, and gives Mike a thankful smile. “Yeah, that’s—good.”

“Great. Room next to mine is aired out.”

“Cool.” Jeff turns to the stairs, then turns back to Mike. “Hey. Thanks.”

“For what?”

Jeff rolls his eyes. “For having me.”

Mike shrugs. “You’re always wel—”

Jeff snorts. Mike stops, because Jeff has a point. There have been plenty of times when Jeff wouldn’t have been welcome here. If he’d come in those months after Mike was bought out—after DC—Mike doesn’t know what he’d have said, but it wouldn’t have been good. Jeff was too mixed up in everything, all that anger with nowhere to go but at Jeff for being him, for thriving, for calling too much during the months Mike hadn’t been able to deal with it, then for not calling at all once maybe Mike could.

“You always have a place here,” Mike corrects. That’s true. That’ll always be true.

Jeff smiles again, and somehow it’s still the same shy, pleased smile he’d had at eighteen when Mike had adopted him. It looks a little absurd on someone pushing forty.

“Get some rest,” Mike tells him, and turns his back on Jeff. There’s silence for a moment, then Mike hears Jeff moving up the stairs.

Mike lets out his breath. Arnold whuffs softly, and Mike shakes his head down at him. They’re both still stupid, apparently.

* * *

Mike works out, fiddles around in his workshop, then makes dinner, while Jeff is knocked out. He’s finishing up grilling yesterday’s catch when Jeff comes down the stairs, his steps heavier than they had been.

“Feel better?” Mike asks. He doesn’t turn around.

Jeff grunts, half assent and half ‘how could I ever feel better?’

“Dinner soon,” Mike fills in. Jeff not becoming any more communicative isn’t a surprise.

“You cook?” Jeff asks, leaning over Mike’s shoulder. Mike goes tense, then forces himself to relax. They’d always been easy in each other’s space, once. Mike just hasn’t had anyone that easy in his space off the ice in—well, since Jeff. If he ever had anyone else. Or, that’s not fair, he’d had relationships, but no man or woman he’s ever dated have been Jeff.

“Didn’t have much else to do other than learn,” Mike retorts, but Jeff had clearly already sensed Mike’s tension and stepped back. Mike’s thankful. Jeff is—a lot, still. Having him near Mike is hard. “You weren’t here to feed me, so.”

Jeff snorts. It’s not really true and they both know it; Jeff hadn’t lived with Mike by the end of his time in LA, and even when they did live together Jeff didn’t cook for him all the time. It’s just that it had been their thing, a little. Jeff had liked to cook; Mike didn’t. It made sense. Mike’s not saying that after Jeff moved out Mike didn’t resent his empty kitchen a little, but he’s not _not_ saying that either.

Jeff takes another step away. “Plates in the same place?” he asks, and Mike nods. Jeff reaches around Mike to get out plates, to set a table. Mike doesn’t usually bother—perks of living alone—but he doesn’t object. It gets Jeff out of his space, anyway.

They talk about nothing at all while they eat. Jeff does look better after his nap, but the exhaustion is still there. He looks—the Jeff in Mike’s mind will always be the Jeff who won his cups, the Jeff Mike left in LA, still in his prime. This isn’t that Jeff, and not just in lost muscle mass. Then again, Mike knows he isn’t the man who won a Cup either. He doesn’t really want to know what Jeff sees when he looks at Mike—if he sees all the weakness that cracked beneath the surface. Mike wants to pretend Jeff doesn’t see it. 

Jeff gets up to clear the table, then starts to do the dishes. Mike doesn’t call him on it. Jeff’s always needed something to do with his hands.

Instead, he leans against the island. It’s both disconcerting and not, having Jeff in his kitchen again. Watching him move around the kitchen so easily. It could be twenty years ago—well, the kitchen’s a hell of a lot better, and it’s not like they ever actually used dishes back then, but the sentiment is there.

Just like the rest of it is. Jeff’s got the sort of face he always had, when he was trying not to show like he’s feeling anything. Like he thinks he can be stoic.

But it doesn’t help. Jeff’s always felt so much, more than even all 6 feet 4 inches of him could hold, and he’s always been shit at keeping it in. It had used to scare Mike, sometimes—that Jeff just let so much show, that he showed the soft spots like that. Then sometimes it had made him angry, that Jeff had let himself get hurt like that, that if Jeff were just smarter, if he just felt less, it’d be so much safer for him.

Then, sometimes, in the part of him he didn’t always like—Mike had liked it, liked that it had given him a role, that Jeff needed him to protect that part of him. That Jeff might be an idiot who felt too much, who bled those emotions everywhere, but that’s what he had Mike for, to make sure he didn’t bleed out.

(Even deeper down, sometimes Mike had loved it. Loved how Jeff had felt loud and shameless and Mike could feel some of that too. How sometimes that feeling had been how much he loved Mike, and Mike could bask in what that felt like, the full wave of Jeff Carter’s happiness, and the knowledge he had caused it).

And now, Mike can see the jerkiness in Jeff’s movements, the way he’s biting at his lip. Mike sighs, crosses to the fridge, opens it, and pulls out what he had gone to the store to get this morning.

“Here,” he says, and puts the beer on the counter next to Jeff. “You’re going to drink it, and then we’re going to watch a movie.”

Jeff blinks at it, then up at Mike. “I didn’t think you’d have alcohol,” he says. Perfectly non-judgy and so, so very judgy.

Mike counts to ten. “I don’t usually,” he says. “But you need it, so.”

“I already got drunk in LA, so—”

“Drink the damn beer,” Mike snaps. “Alcohol was never the problem anyway.” And that gets him another look, another Carts look, like he’s worried. Mike had gotten a lot of those, his last weeks in LA.

He takes a breath. The anger isn’t at Carts, really. Even if everything’s harder with him here. Jeff’s feelings always felt like they spilled over, made Mike feel everything more intensely. “Look,” he says, still short. “I’m not going to drink it, but I’m fine with you drinking, okay? I only got it this morning, for you,” he adds, because Jeff’s still just looking at him. “You still drink your stupid girly light beers, right?”

“You’ll notice I’m not the one with the belly,” Jeff retorts, but he takes the beer. He’s still watching Mike, a bit like he’s a time bomb, but he doesn’t say anything.

“Some of us aren’t beanpoles into our forties,” Mike throws back.

Jeff snorts, then he shakes his head, and pops open the beer with a bottle opener on his keychain. “Fuck, I wish. Remember when we could eat anything?”

“I remember when you needed to eat everything,” Mike tells him, but Jeff knows that means he gets it. They aren’t those kids anymore. “Come on. We’re watching something stupid, so you’ll like it.”

“Oh, like your fishing shows?” Carts asks, but he follows Mike to the living room, takes the seat on the other end of the couch from him. Arnold totters in after him, drags his way to Jeff’s feet and plops down there.

In revenge, Mike actually does turn on one of his fishing shows. It gets a bit of a smile out of Jeff, maybe the first one since he got here. Mike can feel how that twists in him, and looks back at the TV.

They watch the show in silence. It’s not unsurprising. Jeff’s never been talkative at the best of times, and Mike doesn’t know what to say. What do you say to the guy who was once your best friend, when he got ditched? When you can’t entirely find it in yourself to be sad?

They don’t talk about it. They watch TV, then they go up to bed, and Mike makes sure Jeff is settled and Jeff bids him and Arnold both goodnight before ambling off to his own bed.

Mike sleeps badly that night, because he’s slept badly for about ten years. It barely feels like he’s gone to sleep before the sun’s up and in his eyes, and he stumbles downstairs to let Arnold out. He’s been doing it for so many years that he’s downstairs on autopilot before he freezes.

Jeff’s in the kitchen. Of course he is; he was an early riser and they’d gone to bed pretty early last night. But Jeff’s awake, and in the kitchen in a pair of pajama pants and a Kings t-shirt that’s worn so thin it’s almost see-through, and his hair is messy from the morning, even as the sun streams in and lights up his hair.

Mike blinks, shakes his head.

Jeff looks at him. “Coffee’s on,” he says, and nods to it.

Mike grunts out his thanks, and goes over to grab some.

“And I let Arnie out,” Carts adds. “Figured I might as well help out.”

“First time you’ve ever thought that.”

Jeff just raises his eyebrows, but Mike remembers—the first few weeks in LA, when Carts had been a constant shadow, always so eager to help, like he was afraid Mike would kick him out if he didn’t, like Mike would talk to Sutter and get him kicked back to Columbus if he didn’t. Maybe Mike had taken advantage of it a little bit, because he was only human, but also because it was so ridiculous that it felt worth taking advantage of. Like he was ever letting Cartsy go again, he’d thought then, and Mike almost flushes to think about it, the need there. And the things he’d thought, that he’d really hated himself for—the fantasies late at night safely in his own room about what he could get Carts to do for him, if he’d asked.

“I’m gonna go for a swim,” Mike says, before he can remember too many of those fantasies. “Coming?”

“Sure,” Jeff agrees, and heads upstairs to change. Mike sips at his coffee. Somehow he’d forgotten, what it felt like to have Jeff around. How it easy it was. How it hurt.

Jeff’s back downstairs by the time Mike finishes his coffee, in trunks and a different t-shirt that looks like it’s from some charity run, a towel thrown over his neck.

“You running a lot?” Mike asks, as he puts his coffee mug in the sink.

Jeff shrugs. “I’ve had a lot of time recently.”

The shirt doesn’t look that old. “Just recently?”

Jeff’s lips twist. “Maybe more than recently.”

They swim. They get back, and eat lunch, and Jeff’s still Jeff—laconic and easy-going and not-smiling, sticking close to Mike as he cooks, cleans, then goes into the workshop. Jeff even looks around, a little curiously, at the furniture Mike’s been working on, the finished stuff that’s piling up because his mom put her foot down about his shit in her house, but he doesn’t say anything about it. Doesn’t even ask.

Mike sticks it out until that evening, after dinner, when it looks like they’re going to spend another night watching TV in silence. Which would be fine, except for how Jeff isn’t. If Mike learned one thing at therapy, it’s that you’ve got to talk about this shit, that’s the only way it gets better.

“Okay, give it to me,” Mike says, putting another beer in front of Jeff.

“What?”

Mike rolls his eyes. “Come on, Cartsy. What happened?”

Jeff’s face goes mulish. “Nothing.”

“Nothing doesn’t end in divorce.”

“Apparently it did this time,” Jeff mutters. He grabs the beer, cracks it open, and takes a long swig. “Let’s watch some fucking TV.”

“Yeah, no.” Mike crosses his arms over his chest. “Look, nothing you say’s gonna make me—I can’t judge, eh?” he gestures, and knows Jeff’ll get what he means. “And I knew you in Philly.”

“Fuck you,” Jeff mutters, and takes another long drink of his beer. “Fuck. I’m trying to be mature about it, okay? I need to—we’ve got kids, we’ve got to be okay. I’ve got to be okay. I’m not fucking twenty-five anymore, I can’t do that. I got drunk with friends in LA, it’s fine.”

Mike almost smiles, at that. Instead he sits down on the table, so he’s facing Jeff. “No one here but me and Arnold, and we dealt with you when you were a bitch at twenty-five.”

Jeff keeps staring. Mike stares back. He always could stare down Carts, anywhere but the ice. So he waits, and then—

“Fuck,” Jeff moans, and sags back against the couch. “Fucking hell. It sucks, Richie. Worse than Game 7.”

There he is. Mike hasn’t forgotten that, how to do that. “Yeah?” he prompts. He slides back onto the couch, next to Jeff. “What happened? I thought you seemed good.”

Sometimes he’d told himself that was the reason why he’d let Jeff get married in the first place, that Jeff was happy and she loved him and he would’ve stopped Jeff for anything else. Sometimes—well, back then, sometimes it hurt, how happy Jeff was, and pills made that stop.

“We were. Until we weren’t. Fuck, I don’t know.” Jeff shrugs again. “I retired, and I guess I hadn’t realized how much she had her own life until I was actually there all the time and saw how much I wasn’t a part of it.” There’s more he’s not saying, still, and Mike knows it, but he’ll let it be for the way he’s not holding it in.

“Okay,” Mike says instead. Jeff makes a face, then drinks more beer.

Once the floodgates are open, though, it’s more of what Mike expected. Jeff mopes, making tragic faces around the house and coming out occasionally with sad things like, “I miss how she smells” and “I don’t even think she’s sad about it.” Mike’s known how to deal with a sulky Jeff Carter for years, though—he nods when Jeff mumbles his shit and doesn’t make him pretend to be cheerful. There’s something comforting about it, really—about knowing when to shove a beer into his hands and when to set him to making dinner to give him something to do and when to push him out the door to take a run. About the way Jeff just does it, and how he looks better after. Mike had forgotten, somehow, what it felt like to know someone like that. To be good at someone. Once, he thinks, he really was good at Jeff.

Still, he has his own life to lead—he’s got his family, and errands around town, and fishing, and his workshop, all that shit, and Jeff can’t follow him everywhere. They don’t share a life anymore, not like they once did.

Despite that, Mike’s somehow surprised when he gets in and finds Jeff sitting in the living room, talking to someone on the computer. “Yeah?” he asks whoever’s on the other side, and he’s smiling. Smiling like—a part of Mike thinks it’s like how he’d once smiled at Mike, way back when it was uncomplicated. “So how was the canoeing?”

“It was awesome!” comes a boy’s voice from over the computer. “We flipped over like, three times.”

“It was awful,” A girl’s voice cuts in. “We flipped over so many times.”

Jeff grins. He glances up at Mike, nods to him, then looks back down at—fuck, his kids, probably. Because he has kids. “Did you guys decide to go in a boat together?”

“Ben didn’t have anyone—”

“That’s not true! I wanted to make sure Em was—”

“Okay, bad question,” Jeff chuckles. Mike takes off his shoes, then pauses. He can’t get by to any other part of the room without passing the screen, but it’s weird to be here. He doesn’t want to be here, he doesn’t think, listening to the life Carts made. He can barely remember the kids’ names—the girl’s Emersyn, he remembers that because it’s such an LA name and he’d thought about making fun of Jeff for it, if they’d been in a better place when she was born, but the boy… “What else have you guys been up to?”

That sets off a torrent of overlapping voices, which Jeff nods along to like he understands them and Mike can’t quite pick out, but he gets something about camp and ticks and people getting pushed into lakes and braids. Mike really needs to get by. He could go back outside, could go—anywhere, but look at Jeff’s face, as it ends with his daughter’s voice, asking,

“When are you coming home, anyway?”

Jeff’s face twists, unable to keep the emotion off for a second, then it smoothes. “I’m not sure,” he says, in his deadpan media voice. “But you guys are keeping busy, right? Camp and—”

“You said this wouldn’t happen,” Emersyn snaps. Jeff winces. “You said nothing would change, and we’d still see you all the time, and now you’re—”

“Emersyn!” Her brother interrupts, on a hiss. Caden, that was his name.

“But he said!” Emersyn insists, her voice getting higher. “He said we’d play in the pool all the time, and he’d help you with your slapshot, and now he’s not here and he can’t do that. What if you don’t make the—”

“Okay,” Jeff breaks in, and Mike recognizes the tone of voice that he used on rookies, when they were getting too worked up and needed to be corralled. “Em, I’m—I’ll be home soon, okay? And I’ll work on the slapshot with Cade.”

“But what if it’s not enough?” Caden asks, a little quiet, a little hesitant.

“Then you’ll have to go terrorize your mom’s dryer,” Jeff tells him, and Mike snorts. Fucking Crosby.

Jeff glances up, but—“Who are you with?” comes Emersyn’s voice. She sounds accusatory in a way that Mike doesn’t like. “Mom said you needed time to be alone.”

“Oh, that’s just Richie.” Jeff glances over, jerks his head. Mike thinks this is a very, very bad idea. Jeff just gives him a look in response. Mike sighs, and comes over to stand behind Jeff.

The kids are there—they look a little like pictures of Jeff at that age, the girl more than the boy, but they’re both blonde-haired and blue-eyed and lanky like their parents, though still chubby with childhood. They both look around ten, though Mike vaguely remembers that Emersyn’s a little older—he met the kid, once, when the Caps played the Kings and he’d been unable to resist seeing Carts, even if it had only been brief and awkward. She’d been only a few months old, but Jeff had beamed as he’d held her like he hadn’t smiled through the rest of their conversation, as he’d held her out to Mike, until Mike had shied away. What the fuck had Jeff been thinking, he remembers wondering, giving a baby to Mike, who couldn’t even be trusted with himself? When Mike had still been so resentful of Jeff, barely able to look at him and his happiness. How dare Jeff have a child when Mike’s life was falling apart?

He’s never even met the boy, though, who’s blinking at Mike through the screen.

“_That’s_ Richie?” Caden mutters to his sister. “His beard is weird.”

Emersyn narrows her eyes at him, but doesn’t say anything.

“Guys, this is Richie. Rich, this is Caden and Emersyn.” Jeff gestures to his children in turn.

“Hi,” Mike says. He never knows what to say to kids, especially kids of friends, who aren’t mediated through fan events or things like that. And these are Jeff’s kids. These are—Caden has his eyes and Em has his mouth, somehow, the turn of his lips.

“Say hi,” Jeff prompts, and gets two mumbled ‘hi’s in return. Jeff seems to think that’s good enough. “I’m staying up at the lake with Richie for a while, that’s all.”

“This is the lake with the fish?” Caden asks, and Jeff chuckles.

“Yeah, with the fish. Mike’s the one who knows about fish, though.” 

“I know some,” Mike allows, when Jeff glances at him for confirmation. Caden’s looking at him now too, and Emersyn’s still got a glare on, and Jeff’s grinning at them, and Mike really can’t be here. “I’m going to go let Arnold out,” he tells Jeff, and then waves awkwardly good-bye to the kids and goes.

He breathes a sigh of relief when he’s outside again, far from Jeff and his overwhelming, uncomplicated smiles. It hurts, fuck, to see that. To see Jeff and his kids. Jeff is happy and the part of himself Mike never liked wants to rip and tear at that.

Then, because he learned something in therapy, damn it, he pokes at that feeling. He’s never pretended he isn’t possessive—fuck, the world knows that, everyone he’s ever played with or been friends with knows that. It’s not just a Jeff thing, even if it’s a lot a Jeff thing. Mike’s never been good at sharing him. Mike’s supposed to be the person who gets him to smile, who takes care of him, not anyone else.

But—Mike would like to think he’s a better person than hating Jeff’s kids because he loves them and not Mike. That’s shitty on a whole other level. And it’s not even like Jeff’s happy now; Mike saw him wince, just now, saw the misery in him.

But Mike still couldn’t be there. Mike still looked at that and thought _escape_, and he knows that’s a dangerous thought for him, because from escape it’s too easy to go to numb and pills.

He watches Arnold amble slowly around the yard, pain in every step. The kids are just—they’re a part of Jeff Mike doesn’t know. A part of adulthood Mike didn’t know. Meg was one thing, but kids were Jeff moving on, away from Mike, and showing Mike everything he couldn’t be. And they’re still that—a reminder that this isn’t Mike’s Jeff, the kid he lived with, the man he won their first Cup with and rode the top of the world with. They’re old, and Jeff has something to show for it, and—what does Mike have?

Mike takes a breath. It’s bullshit, sort of. Mike has two Cups and a fucking Olympic gold medal. He’s got a life he’s managed to put together—he has family and his dog and the fish he puts on the table and the furniture he’s made filling his house and his family’s. Not having kids doesn’t mean anything, really.

And yet…he still doesn’t go inside until he stops hearing the sounds of Jeff talking. Then he heads back in, to see Jeff slumped on the couch, his eyes closed.

“They okay?” Mike asks, because he feels like he should say something.

Jeff doesn’t open his eyes. “Yeah. They’re enjoying camp and all. But—you heard them.” He shrugs. “We didn’t make it easy on them.”

Mike—doesn’t have kids. He doesn’t know what that means. “I don’t think divorce can ever be easy.”

Jeff just groans, and it looks like the self-pity’s starting.

Mike shoves him before he can settle into it, pushing so Jeff tips over on the couch. Jeff’s eyes startle open, so that he looks like a disgruntled cat; Mike snorts. “It would be worse to have parents who hate each other,” he tells Jeff, because he’s pretty sure that’s true. “So, unless you have regrets about that, you’re doing the right thing.”

“No regrets.” Jeff’s eyes are still sad, but he’s at least not looking totally defeated. “No.”

“Then come on, I need lunch,” Mike tells him, and Jeff rolls his eyes but lets Mike herd him up to his feet.

* * *

The next day is a bad day.

Mike still has them, sometimes—they’ve gotten better, but apparently brain damage is brain damage and it doesn’t just go away. Or so the doctors tell him, anyway. He doesn’t really care why, he just knows that some days he wakes up and the act of opening his eyes makes him shudder. This is one of those days.

It’s not as bad as it had been, back in the worst of it; he can handle this. He’s handled it for years. He takes a breath, and sits up. It’s a bad day, but not the worst day he’s had, like back when he literally couldn’t get out of bed. He can, and does, get up. He can, and does, go downstairs, because he’s got a dog and responsibilities and he can do it. He hurts, but that’s—he can handle that.

Jeff’s already downstairs, of course, smiling at his phone in the way that Mike knows means he’s thinking about his kids. In another mood, Mike would feel some sort of way about it. Now—he just can’t look at it, and instead shoulders past him to get to the coffee.

“Morning,” Jeff says.

Mike grunts.

“You look like shit.”

“Wow, thanks,” Mike grumbles back at him. He knows. He knows he’s broken, Jeff doesn’t have to fucking remind him. “You’re not twenty any more either. And you weren’t that hot at twenty.”

Jeff’s eyebrows go up. “Someone needs his coffee.”

“Then shut up and let me drink,” Mike grumbles. He can hear himself being a dick, but he can’t stop it. It’s better than giving in to the ache in his head. Better than giving in to the urge to make it stop.

Jeff, thankfully, does shut up, and goes back to his phone. Mike feels a little better after coffee—not a lot, but enough that he’s not nauseous anymore, so that he can drag himself over to where Arnold’s lying. He’s got a vet appointment today, Mike remembers, cursing lowly. Fuck, he’s going to have to _drive_. He knows his sunglasses are somewhere—

“Okay, yeah, you’re going back to bed.”

Mike looks up. Jeff’s standing over him, his arms crossed and his eyebrows raised. He looks like he used to look at rookies who were misbehaving, not that Jeff was ever any good at making anyone behave. Jeff was the one the rookies ran to for comfort, not discipline.

Mike doesn’t want comfort or discipline right now. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“That’s for sure.” Jeff just waits.

Mike scowls. “You don’t get to fucking send me to bed.”

“I know what your bad days look like,” Jeff tells him, which is just—Mike’s head hurts and Jeff doesn’t know _shit_, Jeff had been off with Meg, happy and in love, and Mike had been hurting and falling apart and Jeff had had someone new and hadn’t needed Mike anymore and even when he had been there his happiness had felt like a taunt, like ‘this is what you’re too fucked up to have’ and ‘this is what you couldn’t give him.’ And then Mike had been in fucking Manchester anyway.

“Get the fuck away from me,” Mike snaps, and shoves at Jeff. He’s still strong enough that Jeff sways a little, but Jeff’s always been fucking taller, and he doesn’t move. “You don’t know anything.”

“Richie.”

“Carter,” Mike parrots back. He stands up—and sways, because fuck, his body is always going to betray him. Jeff reaches out, like he needs to catch him, and Mike stumbles back. “I’m fine. I need to get Arnold to the vet.”

“I’ll take him.”

“What, don’t even think I can take care of my dog?” Mike hisses at him. “I’ve kept him alive this long, I think I can handle this.”

“You can, but Rich—”

“I don’t run away from my responsibilities,” Mike snaps, and Jeff winces and Mike almost feels bad, but he just—needs Jeff to stop looking at him like that, like he’s _broken_.

It doesn’t work. Jeff just stays there, arms still crossed, fucking—cornering Mike, like he’s some sort of wild animal. “It’s not running away,” Jeff tells him. “I kept Arnold alive for a while too.”

Right, like Mike needed to be reminded of that, that he’d been sent down and had to leave his dog with Jeff. “Great, congratulations, you paid a dogwalker.”

“Mike.” Jeff’s hand is on Mike’s shoulder now, and Mike can fucking feel himself tremble and he hates it. Hates how he can’t think through the pounding in his head and how Jeff is looking at him and that Jeff is even here to see him like this.

“What, afraid I’ll take some more pills?” Mike throws at him. “Because you tried so hard to stop me before, so giving it another go, too little, too late?”

Jeff doesn’t flinch this time. His hand slides up, to behind Mike’s neck, big and solid, and Mike had used to dream of that. Of the simple comfort of Jeff’s hands on him. But he hadn’t had it then and he doesn’t need it now and—

“You’re only a dick like this when you know I’m right,” Jeff says, soft. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

He’s moving, somehow. Away from Arnold, upstairs. Back into bed. Jeff even fucking pulls the blankets up over him, like he’s one of Jeff’s kids. This isn’t—he’s supposed to take care of Carts, that’s how this works, that’s what he’s good at—

“So Arnold has a vet appointment,” Jeff says. He’s walking around the room closing curtains. “Anything else?”

“I can do it—”

“Uh-huh,” Jeff agrees, skeptical. “Anything else I need to do today?”

“Other than take care of a cripple?”

“Only one of us here has bad feet, and it’s not you.” Jeff’s hand rubs at his thigh, an old reflexive motion.

“Yeah, right. So now you’re a cripple taking care of a basketcase.”

Jeff’s lips quirk up, even though Mike hadn’t meant to be funny. “Get some sleep, Mike. I’ll be back after Arnold’s appointment.”

“I’ll be up by then.”

“Sure,” Jeff says, agreeable, and closes the door behind him.

Mike does sleep. When he wakes up, he can’t tell how much time has passed—the blackout curtains work wonders—but he knows some has because he can hear movement downstairs. He needs to get up and check on Arnold. To make himself lunch. He’ll feel better with food, he usually does. He just needs to—

“Hey, you’re up.” The door opens and closes quickly, so not a lot of light from the hallway gets in; instead Mike just has the dim impression of Jeff, that silhouette he’d know anywhere.

“You’ve gotten so observant in your old age.”

“Okay, you’re being that sort of dick, you’re feeling better.” Jeff sets something down on the bedside table. “Feel up to sitting up to eat something?”

“I can make myself something.”

“Yep,” Jeff agrees, and hands Mike a Gatorade.

Mike takes a sip. It’s orange, of course. “I’ve handled myself for ten years, I don’t need you.”

“Sure.” Jeff watches as Mike takes another sip.

“Probably can’t eat whatever you made anyway.”

“Then it’s your own fault for not having the right ingredients.” Jeff takes the Gatorade back, and hands him a plate with pasta and a fork on it. “Do you want to hear what the vet said or not?”

“Tell me,” Mike snaps, and Jeff grins again and does, as he watches Mike eat.

When that’s done, he sets the plate aside. Mike waits for him to leave, but he doesn’t, just stays perched on the edge of the bed. “Don’t let me keep you,” Mike says, so he can head that off. “You can go.”

“Thanks for the permission,” Jeff replies. He doesn’t move. “How’re you feeling?”

“Like I got professionally hit on the head for a decade,” Mike snaps. What a stupid fucking question.

“Do you want—” Jeff cuts himself off, which is how Mike knows what he was going to ask.

“Turning into my dealer now, Carts?” he asks, and he can hear the hard edge in his voice. Jeff’s looking at him like he’s weak, and Jeff isn’t supposed to see him like that. Jeff was—fuck, Mike still had a fantasy where Jeff looked at Mike like he knew the answer to everything, like he trusted Mike to make their decisions for them because leave Jeff alone and he’d go nowhere. Not like Mike was the one who needed help. Not like Jeff was disappointed in Mike.

“Sorry,” Jeff mumbles. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“Big fucking surprise,” Mike mutters.

Jeff rolls his eyes. “God, I’d forgotten what a dick you were when you’re sick,” he tells Mike, and eases his legs up onto the bed.

Mike stares. “What are you doing?”

“Do you want to be alone?” Jeff asks, like that’s the right response.

No. “Your hair is too bright, it’s giving me a headache,” Mike replies.

Jeff snorts. “Okay, yeah. I’ll keep you company.”

Mike scowls but—that’s the other thing about Jeff, isn’t it? The thing where he knows what Mike means, beneath the way he can’t say it. “Just what I want, someone watching me sleep,” he mutters, but he lies back down, anyway. A second later, he feels Jeff’s hand brush over his face, brushing hair out of his eyes; then it settles on the back of his neck again, rubbing gently. Mike would open his eyes to tell him to stop, but it feels too good.

When Mike wakes up, he feels a lot better, but Jeff’s not there.

He tells himself he’s not disappointed. It’s not—fine, it felt good. Whatever. Mike’s in love with the guy, it’s going to feel good when his hand’s on Mike. Mike doesn’t need it. It’s fine that Jeff got bored.

He gets up, takes stock of his body. No nausea, though the headache’s still there, behind his ears. But he can’t stay in this room any more. He hates the feeling of being cooped up like that.

Instead, he finds a pair of sunglasses he keeps around for this, more or less, and heads downstairs.

He doesn’t see Jeff anywhere inside, but when he glances outside, he can see Jeff standing out on the deck, leaning against the railing on the phone with his legs stretched out in front of him and the sun sinking into his hair, his skin, lighting up the bright blue of his eyes. He’s so—god, Mike’s head hurts just looking at him. Or maybe something else. Mike used to have defenses, about how stupid hot he found Jeff, even when he looked like an idiot. Somewhere along the way he lost them, though. Maybe when he stopped having the comfort of all of that being his in some ways, even if not in all the way Mike wanted.

“I don’t know,” Jeff’s saying, on the phone. His hand’s in his hair. “No, look, it’s—I told you, I needed space—yeah, I know they’re disappointed, but I can’t—Richie’s fine—don’t give me that.” Jeff sighs. “I know the kids need me.”

Fuck. Mike can’t hear this. He turns to get some more Gatorade, rams his thigh into the edge of the counter, and swears loud enough it rings in his head. It gets a bark from Arnold, and Jeff to look around, saying something to Meg on the phone then hanging up.

“You okay?” he asks, sliding open the door into the house.

“Yeah.” Mike reaches for that Gatorade. “Meg?”

“Yeah.” Jeff shakes his head, then he looks at Mike, and snorts. “God, you look like such a douchebag.”

“Hasn’t LA gotten you used to sunglasses inside?” 

“Nothing’ll ever get me used to your beard.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Mike throws back at him, and makes Jeff laugh.

* * *

Mike’s better by the next day, more or less. Enough that life goes on. He fishes while Jeff lounges around the boat not fishing. He works out in his home gym, and Jeff sometimes comes down when it’s not nice enough for a run or Jeff feels like lifting instead, which is its own kind of test, to see how Jeff’s still in shape. Not ready for NHL ice, or anything, but a lot better than Mike. He goes to the dog park with Arnold, because being with other dogs still cheers him up, and sits on a bench while Jeff plays with puppies and chats with their owners and generally smiles more than he otherwise does. Mike makes another chair, with some especially tricky joints, and Jeff watches him, a little confused, like he doesn’t get why Mike’s into it, but also a little amused like he finds it funny. He still doesn’t really ask. They watch baseball and Jeff listens as Mike tries, as he has for more than two decades now, to make him appreciate it.

It’s odd, though. Jeff’s definitely moping—Mike knows a real Carts-sulk when he sees one—but it’s not…when Jeff had been in Columbus, he’d been _miserable_. Mike had seen Jeff’s set face on TV, then way he’d refused to do anything other than play; he’d gotten all of the 2 AM phone calls, drunk and sober, where Carts bitched about everything from his house to Ohio to the coaching to his own damn foot. He’d never stopped blowing up Mike’s phone, until it felt like they talked more than Mike had ever heard Carts talk before or since. From what Mike’s heard from other guys who had to put up with him while he was in Columbus, he hadn’t shut up about any of that in person, either, when anyone got him to talk. Carts in a sulk is passive aggressive and whiny and sullen, and everyone knows it’s happening.

Jeff’s on the phone a lot now, but it’s generally messages from his kids, from what Mike can see. It doesn’t seem to be with Meg. He doesn’t even talk about her, really—about the kids, sure, when it comes up, which it seems to often, but not about Meg, not when Mike doesn’t ask. It’s not like Jeff, not like how he mourns.

It could be maturity, Mike can admit. But. He doesn’t think so.

But he also knows better than to push, even if he wants to know. He’s always wanted more of Jeff than Jeff could give. And he’s known how to wait Jeff out. Jeff chews on things, but he doesn’t keep them in forever. Or he didn’t.

Jeff’s had three beers when it comes out. He’d gotten a text, earlier, that Mike hadn’t read. But he’d seen Jeff’s face when he got it, and known it was going to be bad. So he hadn’t been surprised, when Jeff had had a beer with dinner—which he’s been avoiding, probably out of some sort of courtesy for Mike, and then another, and then another, until he’s not—drunk, really, but he’s definitely not sober, sprawled out on the couch across from Mike.

“I almost cheated on her,” Jeff says, over the commercial break to one of Mike’s ‘stupid fishing shows’, to quote Jeff.

Mike doesn’t say anything. He’s—well. Jeff’s relationship with monogamy had always been a little flexible, until he got serious with Meg and she made it clear that wasn’t going to fly. Guys had used to joke that Mike was the only real monogamous relationship Carts had ever had. It had made Mike want to hiss a little, because if Jeff was his Jeff wouldn’t need to go anywhere else.

“I didn’t,” Jeff goes on. He looks at Mike, hard. “I didn’t,” he repeats, insistent.

“Okay,” Mike agrees, if only because he doesn’t think Jeff would lie about that to him.

“I didn’t,” Jeff says again, “But—I was out with the guys, and there was this woman, and she was…” he gestures. Mike gets the picture. He knows Jeff’s taste in women. And he knows how Jeff had always been able to fulfil those tastes, when he wanted, with his slow smiles and rangy body and the way he could sometimes make his silence seem deep instead of like he didn’t have anything to say.

“I thought about it,” Jeff goes on. “And—I hadn’t, before.” Mike makes a skeptical noise, because he remembers when Jeff and Meg had just gotten together. Jeff shrugs. “Okay, not for a long time.” He swallows. “I knew it wasn’t salvageable then. That we were done. That we had been done.”

Mike remembers, a lifetime ago, the two of them smiling at their wedding. “Just because you think someone else is hot doesn’t mean you need a divorce.”

“I didn’t feel bad.” Jeff takes another long drink of his beer. “I—I felt bad that I didn’t really feel bad, but I didn’t…it didn’t feel like it would have been cheating. Emotionally. She had her own life, you know? She didn’t need me in it. And, fuck, we’d done the counselling shit, all that, but—” he waves a hand.

Mike’s own hand twists around his glass of water. “How’d she take it, then?”

Jeff snorts. “She’s on a date.”

Mike’s eyebrows fly up. “What?”

“She’s on a date,” Jeff says again, flat. Mike’s hand tightens this time. “She checked with me to make sure it’s okay, to make sure I knew the kids don’t know, it’s not serious, but—fuck, what was I supposed to say? No?”

Mike hisses out a breath. He’d have said no, he thinks. No, he knows. But that’s his deal. He’d also gone and gotten addicted to pills because his best friend got married, so he’s probably not a good model.

“But it’s—I don’t want to say no. It’s fucking weird, but.” He lets out a breath. Arnold wanders over to nose at his hand; Jeff pets at him idly. “But I don’t miss being married to her, not like it was. Just—I miss being married.”

“What, having someone to wait on you?”

Jeff rolls his eyes. “Like—to have someone who’s there.” His lips quirk. “Like we were, you know. I miss that.”

Mike manages not to let himself wince, but that feels like a punch.

“I never saw a ring on this finger,” Mike retorts, because the rest of it is—too much. Even that’s too much. Even that has the stupid daydreams he’d never acknowledged coming back, of the same stupid domesticity they’d had before in LA but with Mike being allowed to kiss him when they got home instead of Jeff taking home one of his hot blondes, of Mike pressing him into the mattress instead of some man or woman Jeff had seen him go home with and given a smirk like he approved.

Jeff’s lips quirk. “I think I gave you two.”

“You didn’t _give _me anything,” Mike retorts. “And that relationship didn’t exactly work out, eh?” It comes out more bitter than Mike meant it to.

“I’m here now,” Jeff tells him, with the sort of confidence that means Mike can’t tell if he’s purposely misreading Mike’s comment or actually just missed it.

“You’re lucky you’re pretty,” he tells Jeff, because either way that’s true. Either way, that’s safer than talking about Mike’s relationship with the Kings or Jeff, and how they ended.

Jeff makes a face. “I’m not pretty anymore,” he says, sounding mournful. “Meg didn’t want to fuck me.”

Mike snorts. “Yeah, that’s definitely your problem.”

“I miss sex,” Jeff moans. “Fuck, it has been way too long.”

“What, no hot hookups in New Jersey?”

Jeff blinks. “I signed the papers and came here. When would I have time?”

That rushes through Mike too, in a way he hasn’t—fuck, he’d forgotten what this felt like, that vicious joy that Jeff hadn’t gone and fucked his way through LA, or New Jersey—he’d come here to Mike. Which was bullshit, Mike knew; Jeff hadn’t been in any state to fuck his way through anything when he’d gotten here, and anyway that wasn’t the binary. Maybe when he left here, he’d go and fuck his way through wherever he wanted. Sure, he probably wouldn’t be as good at it as he had been in Philly in his 20s, but he’d probably still be able to.

“I just liked life before,” Jeff’s going on. “When I had a wife and we had a home and we had sex and we had a routine and I knew she was there for me and it wasn’t hockey but it worked. Now there’s—nothing. I don’t even have a home,” he says, and bites at his lip. For someone pushing forty, he’s looking a lot like the twenty-year-old Mike had first known, who had sometimes looked at Mike like he trusted him implicitly—like Mike could fuck up a lot of things but not Jeff’s faith in him. “That’s what I miss.”

Mike takes a second. He doesn’t know—him and Jeff have always been different in this. Mike’s always known who he is, where he’s from. His roots run deep into the lake. His problem is that the world doesn’t always fit the person he knows he is. Jeff’s problem has been that he’s never had those sort of roots, and so he finds his roots and self in people and places that change and want other things.

“You can buy a new house,” is what Mike ends up saying, shoving lightly at Jeff’s ankles. “And maybe get a dog.”

“I have the kids,” Jeff points out, but he looks a little less lost. Sometimes Jeff just needs a push to figure out where he’s going.

“And—” Mike stops. And you always have me, he wants to say, but that’s—he doesn’t know if he can promise that. Ten years. Ten years, and before that, years of something that Mike has picked apart to figure out that some of those roots had grown on bad soil.

Now, who knows? Maybe Jeff will leave, and then they won’t talk for another ten years. Maybe Jeff will have to leave, get called back to his life and kids and ex in LA, where Mike—fuck, Mike can’t follow. Too many memories, too many bad patterns there.

“Yeah,” Jeff says, and sounds more settled. “I have the kids.”

Who will take Jeff back to LA. Who _should_, but—

Mike looks at Jeff, sprawled on the couch like it’s 2013 again and they’re reunited and on top of the world, maybe codependent but who cared because they had just put a ring on it. They hadn’t known how bad shit would go soon, or how bad it would go for Mike, at least. Mike had just known that he had just won a Cup with his best friend, had just proved the whole world and especially the Flyers fucking wrong.

“You should have the kids come up here,” Mike hears himself say.

Jeff freezes. “What?”

“Have the kids come up. When they’re done with their camp and shit. There’s plenty of room.”

“That’s not—really?” Jeff asks, and he smiles up at Mike, big and open and uncomplicated, and for a second, Mike just—lets himself believe that he can have this.

“Yeah,” he says, and looks away before the smile fades.

* * *

Of course, in the morning, Jeff’s awake when Mike comes downstairs, even if he’s grumbling about it.

“Head okay?” Mike asks, and chuckles at Jeff’s baleful glare. “You know, you used to be able to drink ten times that and wake up fresh as a daisy.”

Jeff just flips him off. Mike feels unduly cheerful, as he rummages through the fridge for some juice.

“Did you mean it?” Jeff asks, from behind him.

Mike pauses. “Mean what?” Mike’s said a lot of shit. He’s said even more to, or about, Jeff.

“Last night. That the kids should come up here.”

Mike straightens, turns towards Jeff. He’s got his hands wrapped around a coffee mug, but his eyes are clear as they look at Mike. “I said it, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, but.” Jeff shakes his head. “They’re—I mean, they’re kids. They’re loud, and disruptive, and they need to be entertained, and—”

“Sound like their dad, then,” Mike interrupts, and Jeff makes a face.

“Seriously, Rich. If you don’t want them—”

“I do.” Mike wants Jeff here, anyway, and he’ll take the kids if that’s what’s necessary.

“And if you have a bad day?”

“Then I’ll shut myself in my room,” Mike replies, testily. “You don’t have to take care of me.”

Jeff smiles again, even through his hangover. He smiles so damn much. “Okay.”

Mike decides he’ll take that as an answer for both.

“Good. Just give me a heads up and I’ll like, have a cleaning service in to make sure the other guest room’s okay.” 

“Okay,” Jeff says again, still smiling at Mike. Mike takes his juice and goes outside before he does something stupid.

* * *

They don’t talk about it again, not what Jeff has said that night, or what Mike had offered, other than when Jeff mentions that he’d talked with Meg and the kids are coming up in a week.

He looks better. He’s stopped just tagging along after Mike looking lost and more hangdog than Arnold; he sometimes takes Arnold to the dog park on his own because Mike’s pretty sure he needs people to talk to other than Mike; he’s on his computer and his phone, doing what sounds like work in whatever capacity that the Kings have kept him on. Mike watches, sometimes, and tests it like a sore tooth. It feels bitter like a sore tooth. Once, he’d thought that would be him too; him and Jeff both, long, glorious careers and then a position at the end of it like a reward for their service. Instead, Jeff gets that, and Mike gets—his lake, and a pain in his head that won’t go away and an ache for what will make it disappear. Mike gets to still be in love with his dumbass best friend.

It’s still not fair. It wasn’t fair ten years ago when somehow all the times Jeff’s feet gave out didn’t slow him down, but Mike did. It wasn’t fair when Jeff smiled at Mike the first time and Mike had been caught apparently forever. It wasn’t fair when Philly had thrown them away for some stupid sobriety pledge and an overpriced goalie. Mike’s spent a lot of time in the last ten years coming to terms with the fact that life isn’t fair.

But until then, life goes on. Mike’ll never say it, but it is kind of nice, that Jeff isn’t there all the time. He loves Jeff, and Jeff in himself is the least demanding presence ever, but Mike can feel his eyes on Mike sometimes, and it’s—a lot. Mike isn’t used to it, anymore. So it’s nice, to be able to go into his workshop and get the sander going, and not think about the walls outside.

At least, until Mike hears the faint sound of the door opening, and feels Jeff watching.

He lets the power saw turn off, pushes up his safety glasses. Jeff’s leaning against the bench near the door, one of his hands on one of Mike’s newer projects, a carved shelf that was harder to make than it looks. Jeff’s looking at it, then at him.

“What?” Mike demands.

Jeff shrugs. “Just never saw you as the crafty type.”

Mike huffs out a breath. He hadn’t been one, before—sure, he was good enough with his hands, with fishing and stick-handling and everything, but anything using tools was high risk when you made your living based on your hands being in good shape. He’d helped his dad around the house sometimes, but hadn’t thought more of it, until rehab. It had sucked for a lot of reasons, but Mike had found he liked this part of it—finding things that don’t fit and making them work together, the craft of it, and the simplicity. It’s hard to disappoint a chair; it’s either made or it’s not.

“I’m not making lanyards,” Mike retorts, instead of saying any of that.

“I didn’t know you knew how to make anything,” Jeff says. He’s not looking at Mike as he does, but Mike gets the accusation underneath it.

Mike runs a hand over the wood in front of him. It’s smooth, like he wanted it. That’s what the suggestion had been, way back when, by the rehab doctors; find something else to put your energy into. Find something you can improve at, and not feel like you’re failing. Mike doesn’t feel like he’s failing here. He is a damned good carpenter now.

“I didn’t,” he says at last. “It’s a new thing.”

Jeff narrows his eyes, like he gets what Mike means by that. “Did you want to?” It’s a bit of a demand.

“No, Carts, I didn’t always want to be a carpenter, for a while I wanted to be an NHL player,” Mike drawls, and Jeff tenses for a second, then relaxes. Tips his head back.

“Just didn’t know you could be more of a Canadian stereotype,” he says, and Mike rolls his eyes.

“Talk to me when the apocalypse hits and I can provide for us,” he throws back, and Jeff smiles, slow and big. Mike refuses to blush. Whatever, he’d provide for anyone here.

“You gonna make me something, then?” Jeff asks.

Mike pushes his safety glasses back down. “Nothing that would fit in your fancy LA house,” he retorts. “I don’t work in air, or whatever the fuck they make furniture out of now.”

“I think it was cane, last I checked,” Jeff says, and Mike snorts.

“If you’re going to stay, put on some damn glasses,” he mutters, and turns back to his chair. He hears Jeff moving, but it doesn’t sound like he’s leaving.

* * *

The night before the kids are due to arrive, Jeff pauses as they’re finishing washing up from dinner—they’d split the washing because Mike had caught the fish but Jeff had cooked dinner, so neither one of them got the better of that argument—and takes a deep breath.

It’s the kind of deep breath that means Jeff’s figuring out at least a few sentences to say, so Mike turns around to look at him. Jeff looks sort of constipated, which means this is definitely a conversation. Mike can count the ones they’ve had of those on one hand; he and Jeff’s most meaningful conversation about real shit that wasn’t hockey, other than this trip where Mike got Jeff to bitch about being divorced, was probably when Mike’s dad had gotten really sick when they were in Philly and Mike had been freaking out and Jeff had been there to listen and nod and not be shaken by anything he said. But even after the trade, or the second trade, or all the shit before it—that had never been them talking. Mike had greeted Jeff with a hug that clutched, like he would fucking keep Jeff with him for the rest of forever and fuck anyone who said otherwise, like Jeff was coming back to life in Mike’s arm and the LA sun, and that had been that.

But now, “So, tomorrow.” Jeff stops.

“Yeah?” Mike prompts. “Got to finish a sentence if you want it to ever be tomorrow.”

Jeff rolls his eyes, but doesn’t react anyway. “Yeah. Well. I need you to know, if the kids being here is ever too much, you’ve got to tell me. We can get out of your hair if it is.”

“I’ve never had a problem telling you when you’re being annoying,” Mike retorts, which is nicer than the ‘fuck you’ he wants to give. He can host his best friends’ kids for a week. He’s not totally incapable.

“Or if you’re having a bad day,” Jeff goes on, undeterred. “With your head, or—”

“Or what?” Mike prompts again, when Jeff stops talking. He crosses his arms over his chest, and tells himself it’s aggressive, not defensive. It makes him think of—of that last time they’d played each other, when he was with the Caps, and they’d faced off and Jeff had just been the faceless opponent in his pads and black jersey and helmet and a glint in his eye like his patience had finally run out.

Mike had won that face-off, though. Everything else about his life might have been shit then, but he’d won.

“Or—” Jeff says again, and Mike finishes before he can.

“Or if your kids are so annoying I have to pop some pills to deal with it?” he snaps. “Trust me, Carts, I’ve been sober for almost a decade, your kids aren’t that powerful.”

Jeff’s eyes glint. “I was going to say,” he says, straightening from that lazy slouch. “If you don’t want us to talk about hockey, because Caden’s obsessed now, and he doesn’t get why he should be careful.”

Jeff’s been being _careful_, Mike realizes. With his work, with all the hockey shit that comes with—he’s been quiet about it because he was afraid of what Mike would do if he heard it.

“I’m not going to go out and get some Oxy just because someone mentions a puck,” he says, and it comes out like a growl.

“Now you tell me.” It’s in the sort of undertone that means Jeff was being bitchy about something, that he wanted Mike to hear and wanted it to cut. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mike snaps, and Jeff straightens up, so Mike has to step back or tilt his head back in the way that Jeff knows he hates.

“I wouldn’t have any idea otherwise, about what might help or hurt.” Jeff says, and his voice has the rumble in it that Mike usually hears pointed at people who mess with his team or kids or dogs.

“Are you mad at me for that?” Mike demands, incredulous. “For what, not crying on your shoulder when shit started to suck?” 

Jeff scoffs. “No, why would I be mad? It’s not like my fucking best friend was going through shit and I was the last to know.”

“You definitely weren’t the last.”

“I wouldn’t know, seemed like everyone else could get through to you.”

“Stop being so fucking passive aggressive,” Mike retorts. He can feel it fizzing in his blood now, the adrenaline rush of the fight. Of fight or flight, a little, because there are things here that Jeff can’t know. “If you’ve got a problem, tell me.”

“Fine. You should have told me.”

“Tell you what? That I was getting worse at hockey and my head hurt all the time and I cleared fucking waivers? You knew that!”

“That you needed help!”

“I didn’t need your help!” Mike yells, and Jeff’s intake of breath is sharp and harsh. It’s not even true, really. Sometimes, during the worst of it, Jeff was all Mike had wanted—Jeff not as he had been then, married and happy and good and someone else’s, in someone else’s life, but Jeff as he had been when it had just been the two of them, when Mike had been captain and Jeff had made him feel like he could be, when Jeff had eased through all of the bullshit walls Mike had put up and gotten Mike to do what he wanted anyway. He’d needed that Jeff. But Mike couldn’t have called Jeff, couldn’t have picked up Jeff’s calls. He couldn’t handle this Jeff, who wasn’t that Jeff, who wasn’t his. Even if he needed him.

Now, Jeff isn’t the Jeff of 2015, but he’s not the Jeff of 2010, either. Now, Jeff takes another breath, and sets his jaw. “Fine. Whatever. You didn’t need me. You don’t need me. I get it. But you can’t fucking ghost on me again while the kids are here.”

“Who ghosted anyone?” Mike retorts. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

“Ten years later!” Jeff’s getting louder again. “Ten years, and—two months, Mike. I called and texted you for two months, and you didn’t say a fucking word.”

Those months had maybe been the hardest Mike had ever gone through, and it’s that, the memory of that pain and the fact that Jeff was making it his, that makes him retort, barely thinking, “Well, you always have been needy.”

Mike can see it hit, can see Jeff flinch. He’d known it would happen. Meant it to.

“Fuck you,” Jeff rumbles, and turns on his heel and stalks out of the room. A few seconds later, Mike hears a door slam.

Arnold whines. Mike leans over the counter and clenches his fists around the edge of it until his knuckles turn white, and breathes, in and out like Dr. Farella wants him to. God fucking damn it.

* * *

Jeff is gone in the morning when Mike comes downstairs, which Mike isn’t particularly surprised by. What is, despite himself, a little surprising—or, not surprising, but he’d wondered—is that Jeff’s stuff is all still there even though his car is gone. Of course Jeff wouldn’t leave when his kids are coming, Mike reasons, what would he do, load them right back onto the plane?

But still—Mike’s been a dick to a lot of people who have left because of it, and he hasn’t blamed them. Usually he even wants it, wants them to know this is what they’re getting so deal. He’s never figured out what he’d have to do to make Jeff leave. For years he’d lived in fear of finding out. But apparently it wasn’t this fight. 

Mike glowers at Jeff’s stupid-big sneakers, then decides he’s being stupid and goes out to the boat instead. It helps, being out there, on his own, with no one to tell him who he should be. Who they need him to be.

Except that’s not fair, because Jeff’s never asked him to be someone else, or maybe the person Jeff needed him to be was who he was—the person who took Jeff’s calls, who bossed Jeff around when he needed it, who would go out and party with him and then drag him home when they went too far, who would hand him a Cup. Except when you had that, what were you supposed to do when they stopped needing you? What were you supposed to do when you couldn’t be the person they needed, but you couldn’t bear them knowing that?

He gets home before Jeff, and then goes to the kitchen, so that by the time the door opens, dinner’s basically on the table.

Arnold barks, and levers himself up to his feet, but his noise is overwhelmed by the sound of a boy’s loud voice, chattering about something Mike can’t identify. Mike takes a second to steel himself before he heads out into the hall.

Jeff’s there, with Caden kicking his shoes off and looking up at him and Emersyn leaning against his side, looking half asleep. Jeff’s arm is around her too, easy and protective, and he’s nodding along to Caden, and they both look less and more like him in person—the tilt of Caden’s head and the brightness of Emersyn’s hair.

“And then there was a bear, and—” Caden cuts himself off when he sees Mike, his eyes going big and wide. Jeff follows his gaze, and then his eyes meet Mike’s, and his look is wary and a warning.

“Guys, this is Mike,” Jeff says, shaking Em a little to wake her up. She blinks big blue eyes at Mike, but the sulky turn of her lips doesn’t change. “Mike, this is Caden and Emersyn.”

“Hi,” Mike says. Jeff’s still watching him, but what’s he supposed to do, yell at the kids? “Your dad’s told me a lot about you.” It’s true, sort of.

“Isn’t his name Richie?” Caden asks, in a voice that’s supposed to be a whisper. Jeff chuckles, and so does Mike, despite himself. 

“That’s his nickname,” Jeff explains.

“So what should I call him?”

“Either,” Jeff says, and Caden bites at his lip, looking very perturbed by this. His perturbed face is exactly like Jeff’s when he’s trying to process, and Mike can’t help his smile at that.

He catches Jeff seeing that smile, and can’t quite read the look that flicks over Jeff’s face.

“Okay,” Mike says. “Are you guys hungry?”

Caden nods enthusiastically. Emersyn mumbles something into Jeff’s side. “That means yes,” Jeff interprets, “I can—”

“I made something,” Mike interrupts. Jeff blinks, even though he knows Mike can actually cook. But he herds the kids gently into the dining room, where Mike had put out some plates. Jeff’s eyebrows go up, and he looks at Mike. Mike shrugs. Jeff smiles. And there it is. That’s always been easier than talking or, god forbid, apologizing.

“Wash your hands first,” Jeff tells his kids, and detaches Emersyn to push her towards the sink. She gives Jeff a very skeptical look about that, but she goes towards the kitchen, Caden following her, though his look is at Mike.

“Drive okay?” Mike asks. Jeff nods.

“They slept most of the way back. They’ll probably crash soon now, too.”

“Emersyn looks like she already has.”

“She’ll perk up with food. She’s just still waking up from the car ride.”

Mike hums. Then, because it’s nagging at him, because he doesn’t like it out there—“I don’t mind if you are needy,” he says, too fast.

Jeff’s eyes go wide as his head jerks over to look at him. It’s the truth, anyway—Mike knows Jeff’s always been sensitive about it, about how much he got teased for it, but saying Mike’s never minded that Jeff needed him is a staggering understatement.

“Yeah?” Jeff ducks his head.

“Yeah.” Mike nudges him with his elbow, and Jeff looks up again with a smile.

“Dad! Dad, there’s a dog!” Caden yells suddenly, and Jeff laughs and goes to supervise those introductions.

It takes a while to get the kids to the table, but Jeff handles it like—well, like he’s been a dad for nine years. It’s not surprising that Jeff would be a good dad, Mike thinks, watching him. He’s always been good with rookies. Mike’s not bad with kids, but he doesn’t know what to do with these kids, who look at him with Jeff’s eyes. He does want them to like him, but he’s never done well with making people like him.

“Want to tell Richie about flying?” Jeff prompts, when they’re all seated. It’s met with silence, despite Caden’s noise earlier. “You were saying how early you had to get up.”

That gets a quiet murmur of agreement from both of them.

“Was this your first time flying alone?” Mike tries.

“Yeah,” Caden says, stealing a look at Mike.

“We weren’t alone,” Emersyn tells Mike, sounding as condescending as it’s possible for someone with sauce on her nose. “We were with each other.”

Jeff snorts. Mike shoots him a look, then sighs. “I know, I meant—not with your mom or dad.”

“We fly all the time,” Emersyn says, still with that attitude. “To see grandma and grandpa, or when we were little we’d go see dad play all over the place.”

“You used to play with dad,” Caden pipes up. “That’s what dad said. You guys played together for _ages_.”

“A long time, yeah,” Mike agrees.

“You won the Cups with him,” Caden confirms.

“Yep.”

“That means you’re really good at hockey too. Are you better than dad?” Caden asks, and Jeff sighs.

“Caden, we talked about this—”

“I used to be, yeah,” Mike cuts him off. He can talk about hockey this much without it hurting, come on.

That gets Jeff to roll his eyes. “You were never better than me.”

“Who here was captain?”

“That’s nothing to do with skill,” Jeff retorts, and Mike snorts.

“Keep telling yourself that, Carts,” and Jeff grins, and for a second they’re twenty-five again and bickering over nothing at all.

“Are we going to do anything while we’re here?” Emersyn interrupts, and Mike stops looking at Jeff.

“There’s plenty to do,” Jeff says. “You can swim in the lake, or Richie can take us out on the boat, or—”

“You have a boat?” Caden demands, then turns a little red when Mike turns to him.

“Yep,” Mike tells him. He can talk about his boat.

They talk about the boat, and then the lake, and then the kids start telling Jeff more about camp and Mike just has to listen and not talk. It’s disconcerting, seeing Jeff like this. This is what Mike was afraid of, of Jeff being someone he can’t reach. This isn’t his Jeff.

But it’s also a Jeff who’s smiling, brighter than Mike could get him to. Mike really, really wants to be happy about that.

They finish and the kids start to visibly fade, until Jeff decides it’s time for them to go to sleep and he starts to herd them upstairs. Caden bids Mike a mumbled goodnight, then doesn’t manage to say anything when Mike replies in kind. Emersyn says something that might be a good night, but it doesn’t sound very sincere if she did.

Mike cleans up as Jeff does whatever with the kids, lets Arnold outside. When he comes back in, Jeff’s still not downstairs, which strikes Mike as weird—it can’t take that long to get kids to sleep, right?

He goes upstairs, to the room the kids are sharing. The door’s ajar, so he pushes it open—and muffles his snort.

The kids are both asleep, lumps on the two twin beds. But there’s a matching blonde head asleep next to Emersyn, Jeff conked out with his kids like he was reading to them or something and had fallen asleep with him. He looks incredibly uncomfortable; his head’s at a weird angle and he’s still got shoes on and one of his arms is twisted so it’s not disturbing Emersyn.

Mike shakes his head, then pads into the room, shakes Jeff’s shoulder.

“Hm?” Jeff comes awake quietly, blinking at him. “Mike?”

Mike ignores what that feels like, Jeff using his name for once, in that hoarse, just-awake tone. “Sleeping here’ll kill your back, old man,” he whispers, and tugs until Jeff gets up, still looking a little dazed. He follows Mike out, though, and down the hall to his room.

“Go to sleep properly,” he orders, and Jeff smiles.

“Sure, Rich,” he agrees, easy. Then, “Thanks. For being okay with letting the kids visit.”

He’s looking at Mike like he thinks Mike is a good person, even though—even though Mike isn’t. Mike wanted the kids to come because it meant Jeff would stay here longer, because it meant that he could have Jeff longer.

“Yeah, well, you needed it,” he mutters, because that’s the easiest response. It’s true, sort of. Jeff looks at him like he gets it, then he shakes his head, and goes to bed.

Mike goes to bed a little later, after messing around on the TV some and trying to think about other things. It doesn’t work—when he jerks off that night, he can’t help but hear Jeff saying, “Mike,” like him being there was the best surprise he’d ever known.

* * *

When Mike wakes up the next day, there are already noises from downstairs—high-pitched children’s voices and the lower, constant hum of Jeff’s voice, a sound that’s somehow written into Mike’s bones.

Mike drags himself up, then remembers to throw on a shirt and make himself presentable in a way he doesn’t always when it’s just Jeff there. Then he goes downstairs.

The kids aren’t inside; Mike finds them outside when he goes out onto the porch. He pauses a second to wait, to watch, as Jeff tosses a ball between the three of them. It’s quite a picture, all of them tall and blonde, the kids cute in the way kids are and Jeff, well. Mike’s basically resigned himself to the fact that he’s apparently into tall, rangy blondes at any point.

The point is, it’s picturesque, the three of them playing on the lawn, Emersyn shrieking delightedly as Jeff pitches the ball a little over her head and she jumps for it. Caden boos, then dashes after her.

“Come on guys, quiet,” Jeff cautions, but he’s laughing too. Mike’s definitely never managed to get him to laugh like that. “Richie’s sleeping.”

“Caden!” Emersyn yells, running away from her brother. “I’ve got it, you can’t—”

“Nu-uh, not for long—”

“Can’t catch me—”

“Oh, hey,” Jeff says, looking up at Mike. The remnants of the laughter is still in his eyes. “Sorry, did we wake you up?”

“No,” Mike says, but it’s too late—the two kids have both ground to a stop, Caden’s hand on Emersyn’s hand. Three pairs of blue eyes look up at him.

This is bullshit. Mike makes a snap decision. “Can I play?”

“Yes!” Caden yelps, then his jaw snaps shut when everyone turns to him. Emersyn scoffs, loudly.

Jeff shakes his head. “Yeah, sure,” he says. “There’s coffee inside, too.”

“I’m okay for right now.” Mike tells him, then steps back. “Should we do teams?”

“Um—” Jeff starts, but then Mike smirks at him, and Jeff’s lips do the thing they always did, when Mike levelled a challenge at him. “Okay, touch football?”

“I’m on dad’s team,” Emersyn snaps immediately, and Caden makes a weird swallowing noise.

“Awesome.” Jeff holds out a hand for Emersyn to high-five, which she does, giving Mike a look the whole time like she’s proving something to him. Mike doesn’t need a nine-year-old to prove anything to him, thank you, so he turns to Caden.

“Team not lame,” Mike says, and holds out a fist for Caden to fist bump. He does, but with a glance at his dad like he’s not sure that’s allowed. He was loud enough before Mike came out, he can’t help but notice. “Okay, you can guard your sister, I have your dad.”

“I can get my dad, he’s _old_,” Caden points out, then bites at his lip.

Mike snorts. “So am I, buddy,” he says. “Let the old guys guard each other.”

“You’re not as old as dad,” Caden argues, like the idea of anyone being as old as his father is ludicrous. “Dad can barely walk sometimes. You’re fine.”

“Oh, he can’t?” Mike glances at Jeff. He knows that Jeff’s legs have always given him issues, but Jeff never mentioned it got that bad. Had it been since he got here? It’s been drier, for the summer. Mike hasn’t noticed, and he’s always been good about noticing when Jeff’s hurt.

“Just sometimes,” Caden mumbles. He doesn’t meet Mike’s eyes again. Apparently whatever brief spurt of words that had come out were done.

“Are you guys going to play or just talk all day?” Jeff calls, and Emersyn adds a definitive, “Yeah!”

“We’re going to play,” Mike calls back. “Right?” he asks Caden.

Caden nods, and jogs over to his sister.

For a while, it’s fun. As long as the kids are mainly just guarding each other and running after the ball, they’re loud and laughing, and Mike and Jeff mainly just hang out and try to get out of each other’s ways’ sort of half-heartedly until the ball comes back to them and then they’re running—Jeff’s got those ridiculously long legs and he’s been running a lot more recently than Mike, clearly, so he’s got distance, but Mike’s always had to make up for guys with longer legs and faster speed then him, and he’s been playing with or against Jeff for a long time. He dodges, gets the ball, then runs until Jeff’s just on his heels and tosses it to Caden, who grabs it just before Jeff runs into Mike, hitting him with maybe a little more force than he’d give to the kids.

Mike keeps his footing, because Jeff’s always been shit at checking. “Go, Caden!” he calls instead, as Caden scrambles away. Jeff hip checks Mike so that he’s in front of him, but he doesn’t make any other move as Emersyn chases Caden towards the lake.

“They seem okay,” Mike says, watching them.

Jeff shrugs. “They do now. They’re used to me being away. It’ll be worse when they leave and I don’t.”

So he’s not planning to go back with the kids. Mike stuffs that pleasure away. “Caden’s got a good eye.”

“He does,” Jeff agrees. He’s beaming at his son a little, as the kids run in circles. “He wants it, too. Emersyn’s got no interest, she’s her mom’s, but he loves the ice.”

“He’ll have your legs, too.”

“Looking at my legs, Rich?” Jeff jokes, and Mike bites down on his cheek, hard.

“I meant for hockey. They made you a klutz but they had to be good for something, eh?”

“Always could beat you in a race,” Jeff agrees, easy but with a challenge in it. Mike snorts.

“Sure, so you could do the easy part while I got you the puck.”

“Easy, sure,” Jeff retorts, and Mike rolls his eyes back, and it’s—this is what Mike loved, once. Even before he fell in love. This is the man who was his best friend.

Then—“Dad!” comes the yell, and it’s not a fun laughing yell anymore. Jeff jerks to attention—Caden’s on the ground, Emersyn over him, and Caden’s face is screwed up in pain. “Em pushed me!”

“That’s the game! He just fell!” she retorts. She’s glaring at all three of them indiscriminately.

“I did not! Dad, I didn’t, she—”

“Emersyn Elizabeth,” Jeff says, trying to sound stern. He’s always been pretty shit at it, but she sets her jaw mulishly. “Did you push your brother?”

“No,” she mutters. “And you would know that if you were paying attention.” The glare is definitely focused on Mike, now.

“Go to your room.”

“But—”

“Dad, my knee hurts,” Caden whines, and he _is_ bleeding.

“I can—” Mike starts, because this is looking like a lot, and that’s when Jeff’s phone goes off.

Jeff pulls it out of his pocket, opens his mouth with what looks like a swear, then takes a deep breath. “It’s Meg. She won’t—if I don’t pick up she’ll worry, with the kids gone, I—”

Jeff has the look in his eyes when too much is happening at once and he can’t start.

“I’ll talk to Meg,” Mike decides, and grabs the phone from Jeff. “Deal with your kids.”

“Yeah, okay,” Jeff agrees, and gives Mike a grateful smile, before turning back to Caden and Emersyn. Caden looks almost in tears. Emersyn’s jaw is set.

Mike wanders away, towards the porch, and answers the phone.

“Hi Jeff,” Meg says.

It’s been years since Mike heard her voice. She sounds the same, still sweet with just that edge of teasing bossiness that Jeff always needed. “Sorry, no, Jeff’s busy with the kids for a second,” Mike tells her. “It’s—”

“Hi, Mike,” she tells him, and there’s a note to her voice Mike can’t quite identify. “It’s been a while.”

“That’s the nice way to put it,” Mike agrees, and she laughs. That’s always been the problem, or not the problem—Mike did like her. She was hot and funny and she’d made Jeff happy, and given him what he needed, and that was what Mike had wanted, at the end of the day. Mike just…had to remind himself of that. That Jeff could find a woman worth him, and Mike—well, it wasn’t fair that Mike was stuck where he was, but hey, the pills took care of that.

But now—this is the woman who broke Jeff’s heart. Mike gets that Jeff might have to stay cordial with her, and that he’s not mad at her, but Mike’s not going to forgive her for that.

“How have you been?” she asks, which is probably Mike’s least favorite question. Sometimes he’s tempted just to answer, brain injured and dealing with a pill addiction and the fact that I’m a washed up hockey player, but he doesn’t. He thinks that’s called maturity.

“Fine. Been at the lake, lot of fishing.”

“I’m not surprised.” She pauses. “And everything’s okay with the kids? Jeff checked in last night, but, you know him.”

Mike does. Across the yard, Jeff appears to have put Emersyn on hold while he inspects Caden’s knee. Emersyn doesn’t look happy about it, given her crossed arms.

“Everything’s fine,” he tells her. “Just a little scuffle. Kids.”

“Yeah, kids,” she agrees, sounding fond. “They’ve been acting out more since the divorce.”

“They’re quiet around here.”

“Well, Em can be shy.”

Mike does not think shyness is Emersyn’s problem. “Caden’s the one being quiet.”

She laughs again. “He’ll get over that when he gets over the hero worship, then you’ll be wishing for the quiet back. He’s got my mouth for sure.”

There’s something to be said there about how he doesn’t, how Mike would know the shape of Jeff’s lips anywhere, but that’s not what Mike’s attention catches on. “Hero worship?” he echoes. Jeff’s levered Caden up, so that he’s mostly standing, and is now escorting him inside, Emersyn trailing sulkily along. Mike sidesteps out of their way. “Your kid’s got bad taste.”

“You’re the guy who played with his dad for over a decade and won two cups with him and is the hero of every story Jeff ever tells,” Meg says, matter of fact.

Mike’s hand closes around the phone. “Carts must have edited those stories to hell and back,” he says, instead of asking—Jeff told stories about them? Jeff thought about Mike? Jeff had had his own life, his team and his career and his wife and kids. He wasn’t like Mike, stuck in the past.

“Oh he did,” she agrees. Her voice has that twist to it again. She only knows the edited versions of some of those stories, probably. And she knows that.

“So did you want something, or just to check in?” Mike asks. “The kids got here fine and everything.”

“No, I just wanted—” she sighs. “I’ll call later, talk to the kids at a better time.”

“I’ll let Carts know.”

“Thanks.” She pauses, then adds, softer, “And Jeff’s doing okay?”

Mike’s hand clenches around the phone.

“Yeah,” he says. No more. She decided she doesn’t want Jeff, she doesn’t get more than that.

She chuckles, just a little. “I would ask if you’re making sure he’s taking care of himself, but I don’t have to ask you that, do I?”

“He’s fine,” Mike repeats. They both know what that means—that Mike’s taking care of him.

Her sigh isn’t sad, exactly. Maybe rueful. “Of course he is. You’d only ever loaned him to me.”

Mike doesn’t answer. Once, he’d have said she was right—she could have Jeff as long as she made him happy, as long as she took care of him. There’s still a lot of him that believes that. She gave up the right to take care of Jeff, to care, and Mike’s taken over again and he’s better at it than she’ll ever be.

But ten years are a long time.

“Well, you have him back now,” she says into the silence, and it’s the first real hint of bitterness that Mike’s heard. “So be careful this time. Don’t break his heart again.”

“I didn’t—”

“Mike,” she cuts him off, biting. “You did. Maybe not like how he broke yours, but—you did.”

Mike has to consciously stop himself from throwing the phone away. He’d always suspected she’d guessed what he felt for first her boyfriend, then her husband. He was pretty sure most people did, who weren’t Jeff Carter levels of oblivious. But she’d never said it out loud. He’s not sure what’s worse, knowing that she knew all the time, or the bullshit about breaking Jeff’s heart. The second is bullshit, but the first is humiliating.

“I’ll tell him you’ll call back,” Mike says stiffly, instead of any of that. Years of media training finally doing something.

She laughs again, and somehow he gets that she’s rolling his eyes. “Yeah, I will. I really am glad you’re doing well, Mike. Take care of your boy and our kids.”

“Sure,” he says, because he will. Because he doesn’t need her to tell him so. “Bye.” He hangs up, and takes a long, deep breath.

Then he goes to find Jeff.

They’re in the living room, where Jeff’s putting a bandaid on Caden’s knee as Caden watches, biting at his lip like he’s trying to stop himself from crying. Emersyn’s nowhere to be seen.

“She’s in her room,” Jeff explains, when he sees Mike. “Everything okay with Meg?”

“She’ll call back later. Everything okay?”

Jeff shrugs, and, “Cade, you okay?”

“I—” he glances at Mike, and then presses his lips closed, his face setting stoically. It’s pretty pathetic, how he’s trying not to cry, how that looks like it’s hurting too.

Jeff glances at Mike too, then down at his son, then—“Hey, Mike,” he says, loudly and clearly, in a voice that is clearly Making A Point. He gestures at a cut on Mike’s hand, where he’d cut himself in the workshop a few days ago, when he got a little dizzy. “How’s your hand?”

“It’s fi—” Mike starts to bite off instinctively, but then Jeff narrows his eyes, and okay, Mike can actually follow someone else’s play every once in a while. “You know, it kind of hurts.”

“And what did you do when you got it?”

“Um—” Mike had sworn a lot, then wrapped a rag around his hand until he got back to the house, and had been trying to get a bandage on it one-handed and gritting his teeth against how it hurt before Jeff had found him and ignored his insistence he could do it himself and all the swearing to bandage it himself. But Mike has a feeling Jeff doesn’t want his son to hear about that. “I complained to you a lot about how much it hurts. And then you ignored it and poured a sh—butt-ton of saline on it and wrapped it up.”

Jeff rolls his eyes, but his lips quirk up.

Caden giggles too, then, “You complained?”

“Sure.” Jeff’s still giving him that look, like he trusts Mike to follow the play and teach his son the right lessons even if he’s lying out of his ass, “That’s how people know to help, right?”

And doesn’t Jeff’s face do a _thing _at that. Mike keeps watching the younger Carter, because that’s easier.

“But hockey players don’t complain,” Caden points out. “You keep playing so that you can win no matter what.”

“Sure, sometimes,” Mike agrees, because he’s not going to be that much of a hypocrite even if Jeff wants him to be. But, “And that’s how you end up like your dad and me.” From Caden’s face, he’s not sure that’s a problem. But what’s Mike supposed to say? That’s how you end up with brain damage and no way to make that ache stop, bitter at the world for how it spat you out and at everyone who can still play because they got lucky and at your best friend for having the things you couldn’t manage?

“Okay, there you go.” Jeff pats his son’s knee. “If it keeps hurting, you say something, okay? It’s not the end of the world to say it hurts.”

“Okay, dad,” Caden drawls, and hops up. “Can I go play with Arnold now?”

Mike snorts.

“Yeah, sure,” Jeff says. Caden scampers off. Jeff levers himself to his feet, which takes more doing than it would have a decade ago.

“So we’ve decided to be hypocrites now?” Mike asks, looking after where Caden’s run.

“It’s different when it’s your kid who’s hurting,” Jeff replies, unabashed. “I thought it was bad enough watching the guys—watching you—get hit.”

Mike’s stomach does something stupid and flips at that. “I didn’t know there was checking in mites.”

“There isn’t, but there is—he’s already gotten the idea that he shouldn’t whine.” Jeff lets out a breath. “I’m proud of him for it, but…” He gestures to his legs, to Mike’s head. To all the ways they’ve fallen apart.

“Well if he’s anything like his dad, he’ll be good at whining,” Mike retorts, and gets a laugh out of Jeff. It’s true, though. Jeff might have pretended to be stubborn about it, but there was never any doubt when he was hurting.

“Fuck off.” Jeff arches back, cracking his back. “I’m just—fuck, I don’t know how to be a single parent but I can try to keep him safe, you know?”

“Who says you don’t know how to be a dad?” Mike demands. From what he’s seen, Jeff’s good at it.

Jeff smiles again, a little. “Meg always did all the heavy lifting. I could barely handle this scuffle.”

“Yeah, but you did.”

“Because you—”

“That counts.”

“As long as you’re here, yeah,” Jeff agrees, but there’s the same note of anger in it as when they fought.

Mike could trace that down, and a lot of him wants to, because if Jeff’s mad he wants it out there. If Jeff’s going to be the least subtle passive aggressive ever, then Mike can just be aggressive. 

But Jeff’s got a kid upstairs and a kid outside, and Mike likes to think that all the thousands of dollars he’s spent on therapy is worth something. So he doesn’t push on it. Instead,

“Do you think they’ll want to go out on the boat later?” he asks. Jeff gives him a surprised look, because he clearly expected Mike to push on that knot too, but then he nods.

“Yeah, that’ll cheer them up,” he agrees.

* * *

They go out on the boat, and play around in the lake and outside. Mike thinks the kids enjoy it, while they’re there—Caden, as Meg predicted, gets over his shyness quickly, and he’s peppering Mike with questions about the boat and fishing and camping, to the point where he’s started to kind of follow Mike around. Mike has weird flashbacks of being eighteen and suddenly acquiring a lanky blonde shadow, though this one is a lot louder than Jeff had been, and a lot more likely to imitate Mike instead of judge him. Jeff seems to be thinking the same thing, if the way he smiles at the two of them means anything.

Emersyn, though—she doesn’t warm up. She goes along with them, sticking close to Jeff and glaring at Mike and playing games on her phone instead of engaging in whatever they’re doing. And it’s pretty clearly just Mike, because when Mike’s not around she’s still a little snotty to Jeff sometimes but she likes playing with Arnold and swimming and she seems like a funny, snarky kid.

“She’s mad at me still,” Jeff says, when Mike points it out, after the kids have gone to bed. He’s leaning back on the couch, tired after a long day of playing with his kids in the lake. The TV’s playing a baseball game, low. “Cade hasn’t really settled into it, I think, but she’s old enough to remember when it was good.”

Mike’s pretty sure that’s wrong, given how the mad seems pretty clearly pointed at Mike, not Jeff. Jeff gives him a scoff for that.

“Okay, so you know my kids better than me?” he demands.

“I know what it looks like when Carters are sulking at someone,” Mike retorts, but he gets Jeff another sparkling water as a détente. It’s true, maybe Jeff does know his kids better—he definitely does—but Mike knows what it looks like when someone’s pissed at him. And Emersyn clearly adores her dad, clearly hates it when Jeff isn’t paying attention to her. Mike knows that too intimately.

But that all makes it harder when, at breakfast, Caden pipes up that, “We’re going skating today!”

Mike freezes. Jeff sighs like he hadn’t meant to tell Mike like that. Emersyn doesn’t look up from her phone.

“Oh really?” Mike asks, looking at Jeff. Jeff nods, but he doesn’t quite meet Mike’s eyes.

“I got some ice time at the rink in town,” he says. “Cade wanted to practice while he’s here.”

Emersyn scoffs, loudly. Jeff winces. Mike ignores her. “Good. He should,” Mike agrees, and he can hear how stiff he sounds, but he can’t help it.

“You can—”

“No,” Mike snaps, too fast. He is definitely not doing that. His therapist might have been trying to get him back on the ice for years, but—no.

“Okay,” Jeff replies, like he never expected any differently. He shouldn’t have, but Mike still sort of feels like he’s disappointed Jeff. It twists in him uncomfortably. “It’ll just be the three of us—”

“Ugh,” Emersyn scoffs again.

“Em,” Caden whines.

“Something to say, Em?” Jeff asks.

“I don’t want to skate.”

“You don’t have to skate,” Jeff points out. “You can just hang out while we’re there.”

“I don’t want to go to the rink,” she counters. Jeff’s shoulders slump a little.

“She can stay here with me,” Mike suggests. That gets two sets of skeptical blue eyes on him, as Caden keeps eating, oblivious.

“Dad, don’t—”

“Rich, you don’t have—”

“It’ll be fine.” Mike smiles at Emersyn, and he kind of hopes she gets the ultimatum behind it. “That way she doesn’t have to go to the rink.”

“I don’t want to stay with _you_,” she retorts.

Jeff does that wincing thing again. “Well it’s either that or go to the rink,” he tells her.

“Fine, I’ll—”

“We’ll be fine here,” Mike cuts her off. “And you won’t be distracted from helping Caden.”

“I’m not distracting!” she protests, but Jeff’s giving Mike a thankful look.

“That’d be great, Rich, if you don’t mind.”

“Dad!” Emersyn shoves her chair back and stands up. When Jeff doesn’t immediately give in, she huffs out a breath and storms off upstairs.

Jeff sighs. Caden’s still eating, like he hasn’t noticed anything weird.

“We’ll be fine,” Mike says again.

Jeff’s smile is weak. “Yeah, sure.”

“Hey, if she just stays in her room for a few hours, then I’m still okay.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“I want to work on my slapshot,” Caden announces, and Jeff turns to him, properly distracted.

After breakfast, the two Carter men head off to the rink, which Mike isn’t thinking about, and Mike waits a beat to make sure they’re not coming back before he goes upstairs.

The door to the kids’ room is firmly closed. Mike knocks. There’s no answer. He knocks again.

“Go away!” Emersyn calls. Mike takes that as an invitation, and opens the door.

Emersyn is lying on her bed, an iPad open in front of her. Her eyes are a little red, but she jumps up when Mike comes in.

“I said go away!”

“And I said that we need to talk and this is my house,” Mike counters. He crosses his arms. “So. Why do you hate me?”

Emersyn crosses her own arms and glares back at him. She’s got Jeff’s sulky set to her mouth and his glare, but Mike’s been staring down Carters longer than she’s been alive.

“I can wait all day,” Mike tells her. “I’m not your dad, I’ll do it.” It feels a little like a faceoff, somehow.

He waits one beat, then two. Then another. But then,

“It’s all your fault!” she yells at him, her face screwed up.

Mike’s generally used to the sentiment, but he doesn’t quite get where it’s coming from here. “What is?”

“Mom and dad getting divorced.” She blows a lock of hair out of her face. “Dad _leaving_.”

That’s…not what Mike had expected. “I hadn’t talked to your dad in ten—”

“That’s not what mom said!” bursts out of Emersyn, loud enough that it rings a little in Mike’s ears. “I heard her, she was talking on the phone and she said that dad went to Richie’s and she knew he was always going to run back to you.”

“Your dad just needed space,” Mike tries to explain, even though wow, fuck Meg for making the kids think that. “I offered—”

“He didn’t need space before. He was fine and then he left us so he could come here.” There are tears in her eyes now, and shit, Mike hadn’t meant to make her cry. Now he really feels like an asshole. “Why couldn’t you just stay away? Then dad would still be home!”

Oh fuck. “Look, your parents had their reasons for getting divorced, but it wasn’t—”

“When Paula’s parents got divorced, her dad went and lived with someone else, and then she was her stepmom,” Emersyn interrupts. “Everyone said that she was a homewrecker. That’s what you are,” she throws at Mike. “A homewrecker.”

“It is definitely not like that between your dad and me,” Mike retorts.

“You look at dad like it is,” she shoots back. Mike doesn’t react because he’s better than that, but wow, even nine-year-olds get it now. “I’m not stupid, I know what it looks like when someone wants to get married to someone else. You want to marry dad and take him away from us! Well I won’t let you,” her voice is rising now, and the tears are coming faster, “He’s coming home, you can’t get him, you don’t—”

“Woah, hey.” Mike holds up his hands, but he doesn’t—what else is he supposed to do here? He hadn’t thought—god, Carters have a lot of emotions. “I don’t want—” Well, he’s not going to lie to the kid. “He’s not staying here. I’m not taking him away.” 

She sniffles, but at least she’s not tantruming anymore. “You want to. You took him from mom and now you want to take him from us.”

“Look, kid.” Mike sits down on Caden’s bed, because it feels weird to be staring her down now that she’s sobbing. “I wasn’t even there when your parents got divorced.”

“You were before. Everyone talks about you and dad, all dads’ friends ask dad about you, and dad always looked weird when they did.” She throws it at him, like it’s supposed to hurt. “Maybe you always wanted dad and now you think you can get him.”

That hits a little too close to home, though he doesn’t think she gets that. “I—”

“But you can’t. Mom and dad were happy and they can be happy again and then dad’ll come home and—”

“That’s enough,” Mike snaps. Emersyn’s mouth clicks shut, but she keeps glaring through her tears. “Your parents had their own reasons for getting a divorce and I had nothing to do with it. I—” he keeps going, when she starts to try to talk. “I get it if you want to blame me, I don’t really care. If it makes it easier on your dad, then, sure, whatever, it’s my fault. But you being bratty to me is making your dad sad and not making him want to come home any sooner, that’s for sure, and that’s what I want to stop.”

“You want dad to stay here,” she says, and it at least sounds less accusatory, and more just a fact.

She’s not wrong. But, “I want what’s best for your dad,” Mike says. “And that’s to be with you guys. He just needs some space from LA first, alright?”

She blinks. Mike’s pretty sure that’s not what she expected him to say. But it’s—it’s true, he thinks. He wants it to be, at least.

She glances down at her hands. “I don’t want to make dad sad,” she mumbles.

“Me neither.” Mike tells her. “We can agree on that, eh?”

“Yeah.” It gets him a wary little smile—it’s not Jeff’s smile, but it’s still sweet. “I guess.”

“Good.” Mike gets up. “That’s all I wanted. You can go back to sulking now.”

“I wasn’t sulking,” she mutters, and it sounds so like her dad that Mike grins despite himself.

“Okay, kid,” he agrees. He shuts the door behind him when he goes downstairs and outside. A few minutes later, he hears the porch door open, and Emersyn throws herself down on the patio chair.

So that’s a win at least, he guesses. He’s not sure it feels like it, when apparently even Jeff’s nine-year-old daughter can see how he looks at Jeff, but—it is something. And then Jeff comes home and sees them sitting together—in silence, but at least Emersyn isn’t glaring—and he grins, and yeah. That’s a win.

* * *

It gets a little better. Emersyn stops treating Mike explicitly as the enemy, at least, which makes things less tense around the house, and she starts letting herself enjoy things, which clearly has some sort of feedback loop with Caden and Jeff. It’s—nice, Mike guesses. The noise isn’t too bad, and Arnold clearly loves the attention. Dr. Farella makes an irritatingly ambiguous note on her clipboard when he talks to her about it, but he thinks it’s good.

Mike wanders outside one afternoon to see the driveway emptied of cars. Jeff had yelled upstairs earlier that he and Emersyn were going down to the lake, so Mike’s not surprised to see Caden alone outside, but he still—there’s a goal set up on one side of the driveway and Caden has a stick and pucks and a determined expression as he shoots into the goal.

Something washes over Mike, cold and hot. It’s not like he can’t deal with hockey. He played for a season after the termination, he played in beer leagues until it got, well—he’d say until it got boring, because even a washed-up NHL player is still an NHL player, but there had been conversations with his doctors too, about his head and the way that every once in a while he faltered on his skates and that felt worse than anything.

But it’s still…not something Mike deals with easily. And not by surprise, not when there’s a kid who looks like a young Jeff shooting pucks.

Mike takes a step back. He’ll go inside, and no one will be any the wiser.

But then one of Caden’s shots go wide, and he groans in frustration and looks like he’s about to throw his stick away.

“Hey, no,” Mike interrupts.

Caden glances up, his eyes wide and his cheeks red. “I can’t get it,” he mumbles. “Dad’s always go in.”

Mike snorts. “Your dad’s definitely don’t always go in, and they didn’t when he was eight.” He steps down off the porch, down to the driveway. “And maybe you’ll choose a better position than winger.”

That gets a grin out of Caden. “Centers still have to score,” he points out, then, accusatory, “You did. Dad said so.”

He’s just a kid. He doesn’t get that that hurts. “Yeah,” Mike agrees. Caden’s too young to get the stiffness in his voice anyway. “I did. And so will you. Just choke up a little bit.”

“Like this?” Caden asks, shifting his grip, and Mike leans over instinctively to change it. 

When he looks up again, some time later—after Caden makes a shot and cheers, shaking his stick like it’s a real celly, after Mike makes him do it again and again so he can be sure he’s got it—Jeff’s standing in the doorway, watching them with a smile and something else in his look that Mike can’t quite put his finger on. 

“Dad!” Caden calls. “Look, I got it!”

“Yeah, you do,” Jeff agrees. “Now, you want to go wash your hands for lunch?”

“Fine,” Caden sighs, and shoves his stick into Mike’s hands before he runs off.

Mike’s fingers close over the stick; then, slowly, he uncurls his fingers.

“I can put it away.” Jeff takes the stick out of Mike’s hand. “Want to go deal with lunch?”

Mike resists the urge to grab the stick back, just to show he can. “You don’t need to manage me.”

Jeff’s smile is gone. Instead, his eyes glint a little, a dare in them. “Fine. Do you want to deal with all the hockey stuff?”

“I—” Mike can. He _can_.

“Right.” Jeff stalks off towards the goal. Mike follows him, because now this is bullshit.

“I could,” Mike insists. “Look, I—”

“Yeah, I know you could. You can do everything yourself,” Jeff snaps. He grabs the goal, lifts it up to put it back wherever it came from.

“What’s got you so pissy?” Mike demands. Jeff had been in a good mood yesterday. Recently.

“I—” Jeff glances at Mike, then he takes a breath, shakes his head. “Nothing.”

“Carts—”

“We should get lunch,” Jeff tells him, then turns on his heel to stride away back towards the house. Mike refuses to scamper after him to keep up with his long legs, so he lets Jeff get ahead of him. By the time they get back to the house Emersyn and Caden are both waiting for lunch and by the time they’re done dealing with that Emersyn’s herding them all back to the lake and all in all, Mike never gets a chance to talk to Jeff. 

* * *

The kids go home the next day. Mike doesn’t go with them to the airport, so he says goodbye at the house—Caden hugs him, buries his face in Mike’s hip and hides some tears there that Mike doesn’t say anything about. Emersyn’s gone back to her quiet, sulky self, staying close to Jeff like he’s going to disappear if she lets him out of her sight. She nods and mumbles something to Mike, but Mike can read the look in her eyes—this is them leaving without Jeff and Jeff coming back to Mike, and she’s seeing it as Mike winning.

Mike sees Jeff’s face, though, as he herds the kids out the door, and he’s pretty sure no one’s winning here.

Jeff comes back late that night, while Mike’s on the couch watching TV. The door opens, then there’s a thump and a body lands next to Mike on the couch.

Mike looks over. Jeff looks like shit, pale and staring glassy-eyed at the TV.

“They get off okay?”

“Yeah,” Jeff mumbles. Then, after the TV goes on for a second, “They both started crying. They’d been okay in the car, but—” He takes a hoarse breath.

Mike surveys Jeff. “Go get a beer, Carts.”

“You sure? I don’t—”

“Go get a beer,” Mike tells him. “You need it.”

“Yeah.” Jeff levers himself to his feet, then he goes to the kitchen, rummages around, and comes back with a beer. He sits back down in the same place, not too close to Mike but closer than he had to, maybe. Mike thinks.

He came back, Mike thinks too, and hates himself a little, remembering Emersyn yelling at him. He came back here, to Mike.

Jeff takes a long drink from the beer. “I thought Emersyn actually might not get on the plane. She was yelling and—” He takes another drink. “Fuck, being left _sucks_ but leaving might be worse.”

Mike looks at him again, at the messy blonde hair and the pain on his face. It wells up in him, the same instinct that had him inviting Jeff out here, that carried him through twelve years of the NHL. Just to—stop Jeff hurting.

He’s close enough that it’s not awkward, to stretch his arms over the back of the couch. Jeff’s just staring blankly at the wall, stewing in his angst; he probably doesn’t notice until Mike’s hand’s at his neck, when he tips his head back like on instinct. It’s easy from there, to start fiddling with the hair at the back of Jeff’s neck. To see Jeff relax with that, because he’s always been tactile, and it’s easier to offer comfort like this when Mike doesn’t have any idea what to say.

The TV switches from the game to ESPN commentating as they sit in silence. The house does feel quiet, without the kids.

Finally, Jeff sighs. “I—thanks, though,” he says, and Mike waits. “For—being here. I couldn’t have done it alone.”

“Yeah, well.” Mike shrugs.

“And I know you said something to Em.”

“She’s your kid, Cartsy. I know how to handle a Carter sulking.”

“Better than me.” Jeff turns his head to look at him, thankful and a little admiring and just a hint of pride, and fuck it’s—well it’s not better than sex but it’s something along the same lines of satisfaction, to have Jeff looking at him like that again. “Just—yeah.”

“Yeah,” Mike agrees, and lets silence fall again as he runs his fingers through Jeff’s hair.

* * *

Things go back to what had been normal, before. Jeff doesn’t say anything about when he’s going to leave, and Mike doesn’t ask—they fall back into the routine where Mike fishes and works out and works on his furniture and shit and Jeff runs and does his work and facetimes his kids and sometimes talks to Meg and gets these weird looks on his face after, when he comes over to find Mike and just be near him for a while. They go out on the boat together sometimes, and Jeff naps or whatever while Mike fishes. Then they come home and cook dinner, usually by Jeff but sometimes Mike pitches in too. It’s like some weird, funhouse reflection of their days in Philly, in LA; then free time had been a luxury, but they’d lived it in parallel too.

It’s fine. It’s easy, because they know how to live with each other. Sure, sometimes Mike has worse days and sometimes Jeff doesn’t run and hobbles over to a patio chair for the day and Jeff still won’t drink unless Mike shoves it into his hand and Jeff still sometimes walks on eggshells around Mike like he thinks Mike’s going to break and go like, OD if Jeff says something wrong. Sometimes, Jeff grabs Arnold and goes to the dog park still, or just—goes, Mike’s not sure where, and when he gets back he’s always a little more relaxed, like just being around people helps. Mike doesn’t get it, but Jeff’s always been the extrovert between them. Mike doesn’t ask where he’s going or who he’s talking to, anyway. So, generally, it’s fine.

Then they’re at the grocery store, and Jeff’s sent Mike off to go get them some steaks while he picks up vegetables. When Mike gets back, Jeff’s not alone. He’s talking to a woman in front of the lettuce, a tall fit blonde woman, and she laughs and Mike sees the tilt to Jeff’s body and the slow, stupid charming smile that he uses when he’s flirting and—

It hits him like an avalanche, that old familiar rush of heat and _mine _and the urge to go over and yank Jeff away or, better, tell Jeff to come and let her see that he would, that she doesn’t get him like Mike does—no one does.

Mike reels back. The woman laughs again. He’d thought it was better, he was doing better, it wasn’t like that—but it was, and now Jeff was flirting with this woman and maybe he’d get her number, maybe one night he’d leave the comfortable routine they’d carved out and go to her and then they’d get married, or maybe it would be someone else he met on one of his times away from Mike because he needs more than just Mike, and he wouldn’t need Mike anymore he wouldn’t look at him like that and it hurts and Mike can’t be what he wants and Mike knows what—

“Richie.” Mike looks up. Jeff’s there, looking worried. The woman’s down the aisle, looking at carrots. “You okay?”

Mike swallows. Jeff’s here, not with her, and it sings in him, fierce and triumphant and unhealthy. “Yeah. So who was that?” he asks, and he can hear the edge in his voice, which means Jeff definitely will. “She’s hot.”

“What? Yeah, we were just chatting.” Jeff’s still watching Mike. “Come on, let’s go.”

“I’m fine.”

“Great, I’m done, so let’s check out.” Mike looks over at the woman again, all long legs in tight leggings.

“Yeah.”

They check out in silence, then drive back in silence too. Mike’s hands are tight around the wheel. He hadn’t had that sort of thought path in years, the quick slide from event to trigger to need. He’d thought he was past that. That he was stronger. But now it’s—it feels way too much like 2015, and how those thoughts had blended up and spat him out.

They unload the groceries, then before Mike can go upstairs Jeff pauses before he puts away the lettuce.

“So what happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“In the store. What was up with that?”

“Nothing,” Mike snaps. He turns to go, but,

“You’re a shitty liar,” Jeff retorts, and Mike has to laugh. He really fucking is, but apparently Jeff never catches on. Everyone else does. Their team. Jeff’s ex. The entire hockey media. Jeff’s _daughter_.

“It’s nothing,” Mike repeats. “I’m fine.”

“No you’re not!” Jeff throws at him. “You’re not, but you won’t fucking tell me why!”

“You know why,” Mike drawls back. It’s easier to fight. Fighting he knows. Fighting gets out the need to dig his fingers into Jeff and never let him go. “The whole fucking world knows why.”

“If that were true you wouldn’t be having, like, a panic attack in the middle of the store,” Jeff says, and he’s braced too, like for a fight. “I can’t help if you don’t tell me what you need.”

“I don’t need anything from you.” It’s maybe the biggest fucking lie Mike’s ever told, and Jeff laughs, dry.

“Yeah, you’re pretty clear on that.” He takes a step forward, so Mike has to look up at him, and Mike takes a step back to stop that but it’s not enough. Jeff’s there and big and warm-looking and everything Mike has wanted since he was eighteen and a whole lot stupider than he is now, to let himself fall into this dumb blonde with his stupid smile and his stupid way of understanding Mike too well except for when he doesn’t.

“Just leave it,” Mike hisses at him. “Figure out your own shit first.”

But of course Jeff’s the one person who doesn’t let the fact that Mike’s a dick divert him. “I just—” Jeff takes a breath, and it seems to deflate him, curl him inward. “I don’t get why you can’t talk to me.” And because it’s Jeff, Mike hears what’s not there—the ‘am I not good enough?’

Mike can stand Jeff’s anger, but his hurt—_you broke his heart_, Meg had said, and Mike can’t—

“You’re the last person I could talk to,” he throws at Jeff, then he spins and gets the fuck out.

He finds himself sitting on the porch steps, looking out at the lake, trying to take deep breaths. He’s half considering fumbling for his phone, to call Dr. Farella. Fuck. Now Jeff’s going to realize how fucked up Mike is, how much he always hurts people, hurts Jeff, and it’ll be that final straw, the thing that finally makes Jeff leave. And Mike’ll have lost this too, having his best friend back, just because he can’t handle his fucking shit and grow up. He’d spent twelve years dealing with this, and then ten more years learning to really handle it. He shouldn’t—it shouldn’t be this easy to rattle him anymore. He should be better than this.

The moon’s on the horizon when someone else settles down next to him.

“I can get on a flight tomorrow,” Jeff says, and Mike snorts.

“Don’t be an idiot, Cartsy.”

“You clearly don’t want me here—”

“Of fucking course I want you here.” Mike sighs, and looks over. Jeff’s gilded in moonlight and the light from the kitchen, catching on the drawn-in expression, the confusion in his eyes.

Fuck it. Communication, that’s what Dr. Farella always says. He’d thought it would be okay, but clearly he can’t—clearly in too many ways he’s still twenty-five. Let it never be said Mike Richards doesn’t know how to change a play, even if it’s scary.

Let it never be said Mike Richards knows how to stand up to Jeff Carter’s hurt face.

“I’m in love with you,” he says, and it rings out across the lake. Mike doesn’t look at Jeff. “Have been since, fuck. Since we were kids. And sometimes that fucks with me, so. That’s what happened in the store. And why I couldn’t talk to you about it.”

Jeff still hasn’t said anything. Mike gives in to temptation and looks over at him.

Jeff looks dumbstruck. He’s staring at Mike, and the confusion hasn’t gone away. Mike can see, on Jeff’s stupidly expressive face, as it sinks in—years and years of history rewritten, all the times they’d changed together in a locker room, the things they’d gotten up to in Philly, that one threesome they’d had when Mike had tried so fucking hard to focus on the girl but Jeff wouldn’t know that.

“Yeah,” Mike says, and then he gets up. Jeff doesn’t move. It’s—maybe Mike had had fantasies when he was younger, that he’d tell Jeff and Jeff would smile his slow, shy smile and blush and tell Mike that he’d always loved him too, that he’d kept it as secret as Mike had, that Mike was the exception to his straightness. He hadn’t really believed those fantasies in years, but. Their death still stings. “I’m gonna take Arnold for a walk.”

Jeff still doesn’t say anything when he leaves.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy! Next chapter will be up Thursday, 9/19.

Mike walks as long as Arnold can handle, but eventually he does have to go back home. He’s gone through all the possibilities on the walk, all the things he’s been terrified of over the years—Jeff will just be gone. Jeff will want to dissect everything. Jeff will look at him with pity and give him a ‘it’s not you it’s me’ speech, which is maybe the worst option. Jeff will flinch away from him.

In the end, it’s the most predictable outcome, probably—Jeff is nowhere to be found, and his bedroom door is closed with the light on. At least he’s still here, Mike thinks, and tries not to think about how easy it would be to go pick something up to make this _easy_. Jeff is still here, and there’s a sandwich sitting on the counter, so—that’s something. It has to be something.

* * *

Mike doesn’t see Jeff for 24 hours.

To be fair, he’s not exactly making it hard for Jeff. Jeff’s not downstairs when he goes down, and then he goes out on the boat for as long as he can without getting sun stroke. It’s easier that way, Mike figures. Jeff can sulk and process on his own, and Mike can duck having to handle that shit.

It’s not until after Mike gets back to the house, after he eats leftovers for dinner because there’s no sign that Jeff’s even been downstairs all day, after he settles in front of the TV, that there are footsteps on the stairs. Mike barely has time to tense up before Jeff’s sitting down on the armchair across from the couch, so he can face Mike, even though it’s much harder to see the TV from there. There’s no more sitting close enough for Mike to play with his hair.

“Why now?” Jeff asks, without preface.

Mike reaches over, turns down the TV. “What do you mean?”

“Why tell me now? If it’s been—” he makes a weird face—“Twenty years, why tell me now?”

Mike shrugs.

Jeff snorts. “Mike,” he says, and, yeah.

Mike sighs. “Because you fuck me up, sometimes,” Mike says, and Jeff flinches back. “It’s bad thought pathways. I thought I was okay with it, but then in the store—I got to wanting a pill faster than I thought I would, anymore.”

Jeff bites at his lip. “So I should leave?” he asks, and Mike knows what Jeff sounds like when he doesn’t want to say what he’s saying. “If I’m bad for—”

“No,” Mike snaps. Jeff’s smile is quickly contained, but Jeff can’t hide it from Mike. “It’s fine, normally. It just—hits sometimes. It would hit without you here too. I just hoped that saying it would stop it hitting because of—” he gestures at Jeff.

Jeff nods, slowly. “I can stop doing things that make it hit, if you tell—”

“Unless you plan on not talking to anyone other than me ever again, that’s not going to happen,” Mike snaps. He’s not trying to guilt Jeff into changing his whole life for Mike.

Jeff’s face does another thing at that, a quick hit of emotion, maybe at the intensity of it. “Oh.” Mike can see him processing that.

“Yeah.” Mike manages to stop himself from crossing his arms defensively.

“Why did you invite me up here?” Jeff asks, then, and Mike can hear what he’s not saying and, fuck him, seriously.

“Because I was your best friend for a decade and I know how you deal with shitty things and there’s nowhere farther for you to run away and hide then here,” Mike bites out. “I’m not trying to use your divorce to be a fucking rebound, fuck you.”

“You used to say being a rebound meant a great lay,” Jeff points out. Which is true, because Mike was kind of a shitty twenty-something. He’s not a great thirty-something, either, but,

“They weren’t you,” he throws at Jeff, and it feels a little like a challenge. Jeff needs to get just how big this thing is to Mike, how much he means. Let’s see him run away at that.

But instead, Jeff’s shoulders relax, and he gets up, then throws himself onto the couch—still not right next to Mike, but not the sort of distance he’d have if he was avoiding him.

“Turn this shit off, I want to watch Food Network,” he says, and Mike—it feels like exhaling.

“Fuck that, we’re watching baseball.”

“You don’t want to watch Gordon Ramsey be mean to everyone?” Jeff asks, smirking, and, fine. Mike kind of does.

“Whatever,” he says, and changes the channel.

* * *

He’d hoped that would be the end of it, but it isn’t. Things don’t change necessarily, but Jeff will just ask questions at random times—

“So when did it start?” when they’re lounging on the porch, Jeff answering emails and Mike vaguely looking up designs online, and Mike shrugs because he doesn’t know. Mike’s known he was bi since before he met Jeff, and Jeff was hot; it was already normal to think about Jeff’s hands and lips and legs when he noticed he was doing it. Mike doesn’t think that the thrill, the bone-deep feeling of rightness and satisfaction, was there the first time Jeff had gotten smashed and draped himself over Mike and talked shit into his ear instead of going off and getting laid, but he’s honestly not sure. At this point, it seems pointless to ask. Not even Dr. Farella had really cared about when or how it started, just that it had.

Later, during a commercial break during the baseball game, “But you’ve had relationships, right?” And that gets a roll of Mike’s eyes, because,

“I wasn’t just going to wait for something that wasn’t going to happen,” Mike tells Jeff, but Jeff tilts his head and Mike wonders if he’s noticing that Mike never did have a relationship that lasted. Mike doesn’t think it’s because of Jeff, exactly; he meant what he said, that he knew it was never going to happen and that was that. But—it was hard to want something else that was more than easy sex, when Jeff was there. When Jeff needed him.

Then in Mike’s home gym, where Jeff’s running on the treadmill because it’s too hot outside and Mike’s lifting because working out is a good routine, even if he can’t do it at the level he once did, Jeff slows down to a walk, wipes the sweat off his face, and asks, “Is that why you never liked Meg?”

“I liked Meg.”

Jeff scoffs.

“I liked her as much as I could,” Mike insists. “She made you happy.”

Jeff’s focus changes to the read-out on the treadmill. “Yeah,” he agrees. He sounds sad, like he did when he got to the lake, but not broken. “She did.”

Mike sets down his weights with a clang. Jeff looks over, surprised by the noise, and then doesn’t look away. “I don’t like her now,” he says. Jeff bites at his lips as he walks. “You have to. I don’t. Not after she hurt you.”

It’s one of those things that Mike hears himself say and knows it’s too much, too intense. Especially when Jeff knows. But instead of being awkward or whatever, Jeff smiles, just a little, then ups the pace on the treadmill again, because apparently the conversation is over.

* * *

Mike has another bad day, a few days later.

It’s not as bad as the one earlier in the month; it doesn’t take him out at the knees like that. This one just presses at his temples, sets him off balance, emotionally and physically. It doesn’t help that it’s heavy and humid out, rain clearly imminent but weighing on him too. He snaps at Arnold when he tries to beg for breakfast, at Jeff when he tells Mike he’s going to work on the porch, at his mom when she calls him that afternoon because it’s unusual that they haven’t seen him for this long. “We’d love to see Jeff, too,” she says, and Mike snaps back at that too. Jeff’s here to get away from everyone, not to see Mike’s family who have their own ideas and expectations of him. Mike knows his mom’s built up this whole dream where if Mike sees Jeff, it’ll just—fix him.

“You know, I wouldn’t mind going over to see your parents,” Jeff says, when Mike hangs up. Mike jumps—he hadn’t noticed Jeff had come back inside. “It’s been a while.”

“Maybe I’d mind,” Mike snaps. Jeff’s eyebrows go up, and he shrugs, casual.

“Okay,” he says, and grabs a glass to fill it up with water. Mike’s irritated at that too. Why doesn’t Jeff argue? Why does Jeff just let him be an asshole to him?

“Do you want to?” Mike demands.

Jeff shrugs again, and takes a sip of the water. He’s so fucking—Mike just wants him to _care_. To want fucking something.

“Do you want to?” Mike repeats again.

“Not if you don’t want me to.”

“I don’t.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“I’m going back outside,” Jeff says, a little sharper. He puts down his glass, then moves towards the door, and—

“What is wrong with you?” Mike snaps. Jeff’s definitely limping, moving slow and creaky.

“Nothing,” Jeff mutters, and Mike doesn’t even have to see his face to know he’s lying out his ass. Mike snorts. Jeff’s shoulders tense. “Rain and bad knees, is all.”

“And you ran a hundred miles yesterday, dumbass.” Mike shoves at him until he’s sitting at the kitchen table. “Do you need ice?”

“In a bit. I was elevating it outside.” Mike pushes a chair across the table towards him. Jeff rolls his eye, but lifts his leg up so that it’s elevated. It doesn’t look swollen, but Mike hasn’t spent a lot of time studying Jeff’s knees, and he doesn’t really know what this sort of thing would look like. Mike’s body fell apart in his head, not his limbs.

“You’re bitching about it surprisingly little,” Mike points out, and goes to grab an ice pack from the fridge. The Jeff he knows, when injured, whined about it constantly. It wasn’t the most attractive part of him, honestly—oh, he’d take it on the ice, play on it like all the rest of them, but once he was home Mike heard all the complaining.

“Tell that to Kopi,” Jeff says, almost laughing. “He stopped answering his phone a while ago. I think he turned it off.”

Apparently the thing that’s worse than Jeff’s whining is knowing he was whining to someone else. “He never could put up with you for long.”

Jeff’s breath is harsh and fast, like after he gets punched. Mike turns around, holding an ice pack; Jeff isn’t even glaring, even though that was a fucking shitty thing to say, Mike knows that, he just—he said it anyway. Jeff’s just looking at Mike like—like he’s sad.

“Fuck.” Mike shoves the ice pack at Jeff. “It’s—it’s not a good day,” he admits, and Jeff nods, like, duh.

“You’re an asshole on good days too,” Jeff says. He levers himself to his feet, and Mike resists the urge to push him back down. “I’m going to go upstairs, take some—”

He pauses, and maybe it’s only for breath but Mike hears the words and, “Take some what, Carts? Did you bring painkillers?” he demands, his fingers clenching on the counter. Fuck, he can’t think. He can’t see anything but red. “Here?”

“What the fuck, Richie? Of course not.” Jeff snaps back.

“Then what are you going to take?”

“Advil,” Jeff retorts. He’s still holding himself up on the table and Mike has a moment of out of body humor about it, of them fighting but both propped up like old men. “Seriously?”

“You were going to say something else.”

“No I wasn’t.”

“Yes you were.”

“No I fucking wasn’t,” Jeff growls. “Do you honestly think I would do that? I’m not an idiot.”

Mike knows, he just—“I have some down here,” he mutters. Jeff’s pause feels heavy. “It’s just Advil and I barely take it, it’s fine,” he adds, voice still tight.

“Okay.” But Jeff doesn’t move. “Are you going to get some sleep?”

“I can—”

“I’ll get the Advil if you go to sleep,” Jeff bargains, and it doesn’t make any sense as a bargain at all, but Mike sighs.

“Fine,” he mutters. But he waits until Jeff heads towards the downstairs bathroom to get the Advil before he goes upstairs and closes the blackout curtains. 

When he wakes up again, he’s feeling a little better, though he can still feel the weight of the weather, of his head. At least he’s not nauseous when he sits up, though. He is sick of his room. And—fuck, maybe he feels bad.

He texts his mom, just a quick _bad day_, which she’ll understand, then goes downstairs. The TV is on in the living room, but the thought of watching a screen sounds like too much, so Mike detours to the kitchen. It’s easier here, anyway. Without Jeff.

A few minutes later, the TV clicks off. Like an invitation.

Mike sighs, and goes to the living room.

Jeff’s sprawled out lengthwise on the couch, his foot propped up on a few pillows and an ice pack resting on his knee. His head is turned toward the dark TV, but he’s got his phone out, is flipping through it and clearly, pointedly, not paying attention to Mike.

Mike can’t fit on the couch, because Jeff’s too tall and takes up the whole couch, so he sits in the chair instead, even though that itches at him, like something’s wrong. “Feeling better?” Jeff shrugs. Mike rolls his eyes. “You can complain. I’m used to it.”

“I got the better part of the deal though, right?” Jeff’s still not looking at Mike. “My leg’s fucked sometimes. You got…”

“Brain damage. Yeah.” Mike shrugs too.

“Is that why you didn’t say anything?” Jeff asks. “Back when—in LA. Because you were mad at me? For being healthy?”

“A little.” Mike can almost hear Jeff waiting. When Mike doesn’t say anything more, though, Jeff adds,

“A lot of the other guys were healthier than me. And you talked to them.”

“Yeah,” Mike agrees. Jeff’s not pretending to look at his phone anymore; he’s just looking up at the ceiling. Without even his phone’s backlight, the room’s cast in shadows, from the sun setting outside beyond the curtains Jeff must have let down.

“You didn’t talk to me.” 

“No.” It’s not like Mike’s going to deny it.

“Even though you were in love with me.” Jeff finally looks at Mike, propping himself up on his elbows so he can see him.

“Yeah.” Mike doesn’t look away. If he looks away, he’s ashamed, and he’s not. He did what he had to do.

“What the fuck, Mike?” Jeff asks, and his voice does something that twenty years earlier would have been cracking. “You—it was bad enough when I was just—your best friend. But you were in love with me too?”

Mike looks at him. Pain—ten years in the making, from the looks of it—is painted all over his face, almost as bad as how he’d sounded on the phone, when news of the Columbus trade had come in. The ice pack is melting around his knee.

Mike gets up, goes to the kitchen. Jeff makes an exasperated noise, but he doesn’t say anything else; when Mike comes back with a new ice pack to put on Jeff’s leg, wrapped in a dish towel because he’s not a savage, Jeff looks up at him like he’s surprised. Surprised, but pleased, and despite the anger still all over his face there’s a quick smile there, as Mike hands him the new ice pack.

“That’s why,” Mike says. He sits back down, so there’s space between them. God, it’s so fucking stupid but the biggest thing is out of the bag, it’s not like Jeff is going to get more freaked out by him saying shit. “You were the last person I could tell.”

“Because you feel like you need to take—”

“Because, fuck. Because it felt like you were the only person left who still thought I was worth shit, okay?” Mike gets out, and it lands heavy in the quiet room. “You had to keep—keep looking at me like that.” He gestures to Jeff. “Like you trusted me. Like I wasn’t…” he trails off, but he’s pretty sure Jeff gets it.

Jeff takes a second to swallow that. Mike watches him, because he won’t be a coward, but he can’t read the quick flash of emotions. “I’ve been there since we were 16,” he says at last. “I’ve seen you at your worst. I still trusted you.”

Mike shakes his head. Jeff doesn’t know. Jeff doesn’t know half of how he loved Jeff, the vicious, voracious need of it. Jeff doesn’t know what he thought—during the worst of it, when everything was falling apart and Mike was falling apart too and all he knew was that he couldn’t be enough, that he was failing and losing and hurting. “Yeah, I needed you to keep thinking that.”

“So you ghosted me instead.” Jeff’s voice is trying to be flat, but failing.

Mike lets out a breath. “It was better than seeing you.”

Jeff lets out a low, pained chuckle. “Fuck, Richie.”

“You want me to lie?”

“Nah, you’re a shitty liar.” Jeff takes a breath again. Mike waits. He could escape, could do it for both of them, but—he doesn’t want to drive Jeff away, not really. “It really fucking sucked, Rich.”

“No kidding.”

That gets, surprisingly, a snort out of Jeff. “Fuck, we’re a mess,” he says, and it’s a dark humor that’s in his voice. “My legs don’t work, your head. Both of us.”

“I think that’s getting old as a hockey player.”

“Yeah.” Jeff nods, lets himself fall back down onto the couch. “I always thought I’d end up like this, anyway.”

“You’re like ninety percent leg, it’s not hard to predict that’s what’d fall apart.”

“Nah. Well, yeah, but.” Jeff hums. “Lying somewhere bitching about old injuries with you.”

Mike’s had long practice not reacting to shit like that that Jeff says—so easily, sometimes. People called Mike possessive, and god knew he was, but then Jeff would say shit like that, casual and making fucking huge assumptions, and if only they knew. This was why he got caught for so long, so tangled—because Jeff claimed him too.

“Sap,” is what he says, instead of that.

Jeff shrugs. Mike can’t really see his face, but he doesn’t look displeased.

So of course, “I knew it’d hurt you,” Mike says, because he can’t let a good moment last. Any sort of smile on Jeff’s face flickers out. “Ignoring you. But—I needed simple, and you’ve never been that.”

“I thought we were.”

Mike shakes his head. Jeff can’t see him, but—“You were too important to be simple,” Mike says, then he gets up to get himself some water, because he can’t handle this anymore. Jeff doesn’t say anything as he leaves, but Mike’s not sure what he’d want Jeff to say anyway.

* * *

They do end up going to visit Mike’s family. Mike’s mom hadn’t said anything, necessarily, but she also hadn’t said anything about his bad day. Jeff hadn’t said anything either, but his not saying anything was a lot louder.

So they ended up at Mike’s parents for dinner, and Mike watches as Jeff suddenly becomes twenty again, ducking his head a little and bending to give Mike’s mom a hug hello.

“It’s been too long,” she says, hugging him back tightly. “Not that I think that’s your fault,” she adds, and gives Mike a _look_.

Jeff chuckles. “Yeah, well,” he mumbles, and doesn’t even squirm until she lets him go, when he holds out a hand to Mike’s dad, who also shakes it enthusiastically.

Mike rolls his eyes. His parents always loved Jeff—they had somewhere along the line gotten it into their head that Jeff was a good influence on Mike, which Mike had never figured out how to disabuse them of. Jeff was good at turning on the whole innocent, charming good boy thing—Mike blamed the blonde hair, blue eyes look—and so could actually give good parent, when he cared too. Mike was…less good at that. He still wasn’t convinced that Jeff’s parents had ever liked him, even before everything.

“Yes, hello to you too,” Mike’s mom says, and tugs him into his own hug, much less tight than the one for Jeff’s. “Why have you been hogging Jeff so long?”

“You know Mike,” Jeff says, before Mike can. “He doesn’t like to share.”

“No he does not,” she agrees, while Mike gives a general glare all around, and especially at Jeff. “But still. How are you, honey?” That is definitely to Jeff.

“We were sorry to hear about you and Megan,” Mike’s dad adds, and Jeff’s face does the—thing again, where all his emotions show. He doesn’t look gutted anymore, at least, but he still—

“His kids were up last week,” Mike interrupts. He knows his parents, and sure enough,

“Right! You should have brought them over,” his mom is entirely diverted, but she still gives Mike a chiding look. Mike shrugs. Maybe he should have, but that would have been entirely too domestic, he thinks. It’s bad enough, that smile Jeff gives him, understanding the distraction and thanking him for it.

“Next time,” Jeff says, easily, like he’s going to stay, like he’s going to keep coming up, and that’s—Mike swallows.

“Need help with dinner, mom?” he asks, and she waves vaguely towards the kitchen.

“If you could take the potatoes out of the oven that would be great, honey,” she says, and then to Jeff, “You have two, right?”

“Yeah. Emersyn and Caden.”

“Do you have pictures?” she demands, and Mike’s dad laughs as Jeff pulls out his phone. Mike escapes to the kitchen.

He only gets a few minutes there, before Jeff and his parents come in. Mike’s dad has apparently decided to catch Jeff up on ten years of family gossip, and Jeff is nodding along like he cares, which is nice of him.

The whole dinner is like that—nice. Mike should have expected it; his parents do respect his space, and what he needs them not to talk to Jeff about, and it’s not like they didn’t know each other. So they chat about Jeff’s life, and his parents asks about Mike’s projects because they’ve decided to encourage them heavily, and about town gossip that somehow Jeff knows more of than Mike.

Dinner’s mostly over when the conversation turns, inevitably, to hockey. “It must have been hard, deciding to retire,” Mike’s dad says, leaning back in his seat. He has a beer, because Mike’s been pretty insistent on how he needs it to be normal, and so Mike’s dad and Jeff both have beer and Mike’s mom has wine. “It’s the better way to go, of course, but that decision must have been painful.”

Jeff shrugs. “It was time,” he says. “And the kids were old enough—I wanted to be there for them.”

“We watched the last game,” Mike’s mom tells Jeff.

“All of you?” Jeff asks, and glances at Mike.

Mike takes a sip of his water. “I texted you about it.”

“Yeah,” Jeff agrees, with a smile like there’s more to it than just Mike texting him a _congratulations, old man_. Mike doesn’t think there is. But—he had watched. It had felt like something, like an ending. Like something was really over. Ten years before that, Mike had waited for Jeff in LAX, seen him step off the plane and see Mike and light up in a way that Mike had missed so fucking much. Ten years before that, Mike had handed Jeff the Cup, and Mike didn’t think he’d ever been happier than that moment. ‘They’ll never separate us now,’ Jeff had told him, in one of the drunken nights after they won, sounding sure and pleased and relieved by that, ‘We’re together for the rest of it, Richie.’

‘Til we’re old and grey,’ Mike had agreed, just as drunk as Jeff, which made him careless enough to throw his arm around Jeff’s shoulders, tug him into Mike, keep him there instead of off with anyone else who might want his time. Jeff hadn’t seemed to object.

Then everything had gone wrong, of course, but still—Mike wasn’t there to play that last game with Jeff like they’d dreamed as young men. He couldn’t go down to LA, be there to see it. But he had to watch it, at least. 

“I’m—” Mike starts, but then the door opens.

“You guys still here?” his brother calls, and wanders into the dining room. “Mom said Mike finally let Carts out—hey!” Matt grins as he comes into the room and see Jeff. “He did let you leave!”

“I didn’t let him do anything,” Mike mutters, but Jeff’s already getting out of his seat to shake Matt’s hand.

“Good to see you,” Matt says, because both Mike’s brothers had always liked Jeff too. “Sorry to hear about—everything.”

Jeff snorts. “Yeah, well,” he says, and Matt nods like he gets it. “It’s been good to be up here.”

“I’m kind of surprised Mike let you into his Fortress of Solitude,” Matt tells him, shooting a very brotherly look at Mike, who scowls back. “He usually runs a tight ship over there. I’m barely allowed in.”

“Well I cook, so I think that gets me a pass,” Jeff replies, which gets a laugh all around.

“Otherwise it’s just fish fries and baked potatoes, eh?” Matt agrees. “Glad you’re here to make him eat his vegetables.” Mike scowls and gets up. “Oh, you’re going to clear the table? Awesome.”

“Just making sure I’m the favorite son,” Mike retorts, and dodges the punch Matt throws his way. He grabs a few plates, but on his way past Jeff there’s a brush against his side, and Mike looks down to see Jeff’s hand on his arm.

“Yeah?” he says, soft, as Matt starts to argue with his parents about whether not actually eating dinner with the family means he doesn’t have to help clean up.

Mike doesn’t quite roll his eyes. “Yeah,” he says. He’s fine. He doesn’t like gang-up-on-Mike time, but—there’s something nice about that too. About his family and Jeff there, in one room, giving each other shit. There’s a part of him that can’t help but think about—about next time the kids are up, how Mike’s mom would spoil them because she’s not satisfied with just Mark’s kids as grandkids and neither Mike or Matt seem on track to give her more, how they’d be running around, maybe playing with Mark’s kids. Jeff looking at him with that same smile, like Mike just being there made him happy.

Mike cuts that off. He knows Jeff enjoys his company; twenty years has made him pretty sure of that.

He steps away from Jeff, so Jeff’s hand drops back down to his side, and goes to the kitchen to start loading up the dishwasher. He’s only in there a few minutes when he hears someone else come in, and stands up to see his mother carrying another load of plates.

“I’ve got that,” he tells her, and takes them from her. She gives him an eyeroll that’s a little like looking in a mirror, but lets him take them.

“It’s good to have Jeff here,” she says. Mike may have made a tactical mistake in letting her corner him alone.

“So everyone keeps saying.” Mike puts the plates in the sink, then starts to rinse them so his parents’ ancient dishwasher will work on them. “I always knew you liked him better than me.”

She chuckles, and shakes her head. “It’s even better to see you like this.”

“What, helping?”

“Happier than you’ve been.”

Mike bites out a laugh. “I’ve been happy.”

“You have, sometimes,” she agrees. Then her hand is on his face, and Mike can be a dick to a lot of people, sometimes including his mom, but not to her face. “But this is you happier.”

Mike shrugs. “It’s nice having company.” That’s not something he’d say often, and she looks at him like she gets it, but—Jeff’s not _company _company.

“He’s always made you happy,” she says, and brushes her thumb over his cheek, gentle. Mike’s not usually good with gentle, but he can handle it from her. “That’s why I’ve always thought you should have seen him earlier. When it was bad—”

“Mom,” Mike cuts her off. “I couldn’t.”

“I know.” She makes the face she made years ago, when Mike had finally started to do something more than shaking his way through detox, but had turned away from the TV, from his phone. “I just want to make sure it’s not because you think you don’t deserve it.”

Mike snorts. Deserve has nothing to do with it.

“And I’m glad you could help him, too,” she goes on, letting her hand drop. “He looks happy.”

Mike turns back to the sink, which is easier than looking at her. “He’s getting over it, yeah.”

She hums. “You’re definitely helping, Mike.”

“I’m giving him a place to—”

“He’s been watching you like a hawk,” she interrupts. “You’re doing good.”

Mike doesn’t respond to that. What is there to say? Yeah, he’s maybe helping, but what does that mean? And what the hell does it mean that Jeff is watching him all the time? That’s not how it worked, before; before it was Mike, who always had to be watching Jeff, who always had to be keeping track of him, and Jeff who would circle back, pulled back to Mike. He doesn’t know what to do when Jeff’s watching him.

“Anyway,” she says, and nudges his hip like she wants to get to the sink. “I’m glad we finally got to see him. Though you should have brought his kids over! We still have the inner tube hook up for the boat, and—”

“Yes, I know,” Mike rolls his eyes, and prevents her from trying to help by starting to load up the rest of the dishes in the dishwasher as her talk turns to his cousins.

“Oh, you should hear this!” his mom goes on, and Mike turns to see Jeff’s come in. “Mike’s cousin Nell, I’m not sure if you’ve met her—”

“I don’t think so?” Jeff looks to Mike for confirmation.

“She was up here one summer when you were. We—” Mike’s not exactly sure how to describe her in a way that will jog Jeff’s memory and he can say in front of his mom. “She drives the boat like a maniac and nearly dumped all of us off of it?”

“Oh, right.” Jeff grins. He probably remembers how he’d flirted with her, because Nell had also been very pretty and apparently into blondes. Mike’s still not sure if they ever actually hooked up; there had been a lot of that over the summers, when everyone Mike knew came over and hung out for parties that didn’t stop so much as they ebbed and flowed around Mike and Jeff. Mike had been hooking up too—obviously not with anyone related to him, but with the other guys and girls around, and ignoring the fact that he leaned towards blondes.

“Well, she’s moving to California—San Diego—for work, and—” his mom’s still going. Jeff nods, then he wanders over to where Mike is, leans against the counter next to him. It’s—not too close, but it is close, and Mike can feel the warmth of him.

“Irene, did you steal the boys?” Mike’s dad calls, from the kitchen. “I sent Jeff in for the dessert plates.”

“Mike, did you run away with him again?” Matt calls. Mike can’t respond how he’d like, so he makes a note to check him extra hard, next time they play anything with contact.

“Oh, right, sorry.” Jeff ducks his head and shrugs a little. “Um, where are—”

“Up above the sink there.” Mike’s mom gestures to the cabinet; Jeff turns to reach up to them. It brings him even closer to Mike, and then one of his hands is light on the small of Mike’s back as he reaches up with the other. Mike wills himself not to freeze, or not to lean into it. It’s—good, he decides; Jeff had always been handsy, and this is him not being put off by what he knows about Mike now. This is him adjusting.

Then Jeff settles back down, plates in his hands. “Should I bring these back out?” he asks, and Mike’s mom nods.

“Yes. And take my son with you, he shouldn’t be hiding in here.”

“Yeah, Rich. Don’t hide with your mom,” Jeff agrees, teasing, and Mike rolls his eyes and elbows Jeff lightly. It gets a laugh from Jeff, as they walk back into the dining room.

The rest of the night is—nice, too, in the same weird domestic fever dream way. It still feels surreal, not just having Jeff around, but having Jeff with his family. It’s not like they’re twenty again, taking their parents out to dinner puffed up with pride about their first contracts. It’s just like—something new.

Mike doesn’t like new, generally. He doesn’t handle it well. But he thinks he might like this.

They don’t stay particularly late, because his parents are getting old, however little they want to admit it. But it’s clear when they start to fade, and Mike gives Jeff and Matt looks to signal they should leave. Matt makes a little-brother face despite the fact that he’s pushing forty too, but Jeff nods and gets up as Mike starts to extricate them.

“Hey.” Matt sidles up next to Mike, as Jeff’s saying an involved goodbye to their dad, which apparently involves a lot of what Mike thinks is fathering advice. “So. Carts.”

“Yeah.” Mike raises his eyebrows at him. “You gonna say you like him better than me too? I didn’t think you wanted kids.”

“Ah, fuck off.” Matt says companionably. Mike glances over at Jeff again. He’s nodding to Mike’s dad, but then he looks over at Mike, catches him watching. He smiles again, slow and crooked and it’s such a stupid smile but fuck Mike wants it. Wants the way Jeff’s looking at him, like he’s willing to just stay here like this, with Mike’s family, most of the people Mike loves in the world right here. 

“Mike.” Matt says his name more urgently. “Look. Have you thought about this?”

“About what?”

“I just—” Matt takes a breath. “About having him here. About doing…this again.”

“He needed a place to get over his divorce,” Mike snaps. He can do that at his brother, if not his mom. “Am I not supposed to help—”

“Hey, I’m all on the Carts train, you adopted him enough he’s my brother too, or something.” Matt holds up his hands, but he’s still looking at Mike so seriously. Like he’s worried. Because Mike’s little brother worries about him too. “But—you know he’s going to go home, right? Back to LA. He’s got a life there, and kids, and—are you going to be okay when that happens?”

Mike looks at Jeff again, all tall and lanky and golden. “I’ll be fine.”

“You’ve said that before.”

“I’ll be fine,” Mike says again, more emphatic. He will be. Jeff’s going to leave, he knows that, he knew that. It’ll go back to how it was before. “Come on, Cartsy, let’s go.”

“I guess we’re leaving,” Jeff tells his parents. “It was great to see you.”

“You too,” Mike’s mom says, and hugs him. “Hopefully we’ll see you again soon.”

“For sure,” Jeff agrees, and Mike—he’s not going to take that to mean Jeff’s staying. He can’t let himself think that.

* * *

Jeff keeps looking at Mike.

It shouldn’t be a disturbing thing. Sometimes Jeff’s an oblivious idiot, but Mike spent the middle third of his life knowing Jeff was around him, and sometimes that meant he was looking at Mike. Mike would be lying if he said he didn’t like it, hadn’t used to want it voraciously.

But now—Jeff keeps looking, and Mike can’t quite tell _why_. It’s not pity or concern, the wary sort of looks people gave Mike while he was recovering when they were walking on eggshells around him like he’d break in a second. It’s not the way he used to look at Mike either, the check-ins, the ‘are you with me’, the way he’d used to sometimes look at Mike like he was checking to make sure Mike was still looking at him.

It’s not unpleasant, not mean, but—it puts Mike on edge, more than he’s used to around Jeff. The feeling of Jeff’s eyes on him. He doesn’t know why Jeff’s acting like he is, and he doesn’t like that. Jeff’s not usually complicated, or not to Mike.

“Hey,” he says one morning, when Mike joins Jeff out on the deck. Jeff’s still in his sweaty clothes from his run, his eyes bright and his color high. Mike feels a little schlubby, in just his pajama bottoms and a t-shirt so worn it might as well be see-through.

Mike grunts his response. Jeff’s doing the thing again, where he looks at Mike, at his shirt and his messy hair. Mike doesn’t squirm, because he refuses to, but he does focus extra hard on his coffee.

Jeff waits a beat, then, “I rented some ice time at the rink today,” he says.

Mike takes a long breath. “Okay.” It makes sense. He’d seen how excited Jeff was to go skate with Caden, almost as much as his son. It’s a part of him too, it makes sense he’d miss it.

“Do you want to come with me?”

Mike does look at Jeff at that, incredulous. Jeff’s looking back, even, just a hint of a challenge in it. “What?”

“You heard me,” Jeff says. “It’s been a while since we skated together.”

It’s been a lifetime since they skated together. Mike doesn’t, he can’t—he’s not the person he once was. He doesn’t just go skating, not when it’s so close to triggering, to what could go wrong.

But Jeff’s watching him, with a smirk like he doesn’t think Mike’ll do it and a look in his eyes like he really wants him to, and—

“Yeah,” Mike finds himself saying. Jeff’s mouth drops open a little. He clearly didn’t think it would actually work.

“Yeah?” he repeats.

Mike takes stock of himself. With anyone else—even with Caden watching, fuck, he’d be so rusty, he hasn’t skated in ages, he can’t be who he was, he’s slow and it’ll hurt—but…

He wants to step on the ice again with Jeff. He wants to rise to the challenge and the plea on Jeff’s face.

“Yeah,” he agrees, and Jeff grins.

They go in the afternoon. Jeff lets Mike be quiet in the car, just turns the radio on low to some of his dumb pop shit and doesn’t say anything else. If he notices Mike’s knuckles are a little white, he doesn’t say anything about that either. He does look ridiculously, puppy-dog excited, especially once they get to the rink and Mike doesn’t back out or freak out, but that’s just Jeff.

Mike takes stock again, once they’re in the rink. It’s mostly empty, other than a few rink workers, but if Jeff wanted to blow his money on that, it was his money. It does, Mike can admit to himself, make it easier, to stare down the ice. No one will see him, if he can’t handle this. No one but Jeff, which is better and worse on its own.

“Good?” Jeff asks, once the skates they rented are laced. Mike takes a breath. The smell of the rink is apparently burned into his memory. Despite everything, it smells like home.

Mike looks up at Jeff, suddenly enough that he catches Jeff’s expression, nerves and excitement and something else that Mike still can’t quite get. “If I get dizzy, or I can’t handle it, I’m stopping.”

“No shit.” Jeff rolls his eyes. “I don’t want to hurt you, Richie. I just want to skate with you again.”

Fuck. That’s—fuck.

Mike takes a breath, and steps onto the ice.

There’s nothing to come back, not really. It hasn’t been so long that he’s forgotten anything. Brain damage can do what it wants, he still knows how to fucking skate. He’d known enough to kick beer league ass, not that that meant fuck all.

He hears the sounds of skates hitting the ice behind him, and then Jeff’s there too. His legs might have been fucked, but that’s only there if Mike really looked—otherwise it’s the same long-legged ease Mike’s always loved to watch, even if it’s a little slower, less precise.

“Hey,” Jeff says, and then pushes Mike, gentle enough Mike can’t be mad about it. “You’re it.” He grins, and then he’s off, across the rink.

“The fuck, are we ten?” Mike snaps back, but he can’t refuse that sort of challenge.

They play tag for a bit, then Jeff grabs some sticks and pucks he must have gotten from somewhere. The stick handling’s muscle memory too, Mike finds, and they transition into keep-away now, chasing each other across the ice.

Mike’s grinning, he realizes. He hasn’t smiled on the ice in—fuck, more than ten years, probably, since it became painful, since every time he stepped on the ice it was a reminder that he wasn’t who he used to be, that he couldn’t perform like he had once. But this feels like—they’re not trying to do anything, they’re just playing, and Mike’s body definitely doesn’t feel eighteen and freshly drafted anymore, but playing almost feels like that. Like it’s just him and Jeff again, ready to take on the world together.

Mike glances over at Jeff, who’s also grinning, his cheeks a little red from the chill of the rink, and changes the game. He swoops around the goal, then sends a pass right to Jeff’s tape. Jeff doesn’t hesitate before he flips it in, neat as any goal they ever scored, like they’re still the kids who played together like magic.

Maybe they are. Mike cheers, like it was a goal worth cheering, and Jeff laughs and skates into him, pushing him into the boards. It’s not a real celly, isn’t anything near that force, but Mike still hits the boards with a satisfying sort of thump. He knows he’s smiling stupidly up at Jeff, because fuck, “We’ve still got it, eh?”

“Guess so,” Jeff agrees, and he’s grinning down at Mike too, but that look is in his eyes again.

Mike has a second to wonder, to ask—but then Jeff is leaning down, and he’s kissing Mike, right there on the ice.

Mike freezes. His whole body flushes cold, then hot. Nothing else is working.

Jeff pulls back. His cheeks are still flushed, and Mike can only look at his lips and think—he knows what they feel like now. Twenty years of dreaming, and now he knows.

“The fuck was that, Carts?” Mike asks. He hates how weak his voice sounds.

Jeff shrugs. “Thought you’d know what a kiss is,” he says, and he’s trying for the normal Jeff Carter chill, but Mike can see the tension in him, the way he’s tensed and waiting for Mike’s response. The way he’s nervous about it.

“I—”

“Hey, you guys done?” comes a call from the stands. Both of them jerk, look up—an older man in the rink uniform is standing there, giving them both a very skeptical look. “Because your ice time is up, and we’ve got kids coming in next for skating lessons.”

Mike swallows, and then ducks around Jeff. Jeff holds his place for a second longer, then he turns too. “We’re done,” Mike calls, and skates towards the goal to pick up the pucks.

Jeff doesn’t say anything while they gather the pucks. He doesn’t say anything while they take off their skates, return them to the desk. He doesn’t say anything while they get back into the car. Mike’s never been more irritated by Jeff’s habit of not saying anything. He kissed Mike. He _kissed _Mike, when he knew how Mike felt, what that would mean to him. He can’t just kiss Mike, and then not fucking explain.

Mike turns that over and over, until they’re on the road and—

“You don’t even like men,” Mike snaps. He doesn’t need a fucking pity kiss.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Mike can see Jeff shrug. “Not usually,” he admits. “But—sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” Mike demands. “I knew you for the whole time you were single. There weren’t any guys.”

Jeff shakes his head, slowly. “There were some,” he says, and Mike’s grip tightens on the steering wheel.

“No there weren’t.” He would have noticed that. If he’d thought there was a chance, any chance—

“Not when you were around. No guy ever hit on me or got me hitting on them when you were there.” Jeff’s smile is crooked. “I used to wonder why.”

“So what, you were hooking up with guys in _Columbus_?” Mike snorts. “The well-known gay capital of the world.”

“Sometimes.” Jeff says, like it’s nothing, and—Mike didn’t need to know that. Mike didn’t need to know that when he thought Jeff spent all his time complaining to Mike and moping around his house and maybe drinking, he was also fucking men. “More in New Jersey, or in London. Or in the Sault.”

“What the fuck.” Mike stops harder than he needs to at a red light. “And you never said?”

Jeff’s quiet, a long minute. When Mike glances over, he’s looking at the dashboard, apparently thinking hard. “Don’t strain yourself,” Mike drawls, and Jeff snorts.

“I was—it’s not like you. I normally only like girls, it’s just guys sometimes. I didn’t need to…complicate things.” Jeff’s still looking at the dashboard. “To risk things.” Mike thinks of Jeff, who took Philly and made it his own, who wanted to be there forever, who wanted so badly for it to love him back. Who grounded himself in the people and places who loved him. Mike doesn’t get it, doesn’t get not living who he was, but—he guesses he gets why Jeff needed to.

But that’s not the important thing. Mike doesn’t give a fuck what Jeff told anyone else. What he cares about is, “Why didn’t you tell me?” he demands. “You’ve known about me forever. You never thought to mention that hey, you too?”

Jeff’s still just looking at the dashboard. “I don’t know. It wasn’t a thing, really. There aren’t many guys I’m into. And, I don’t know, maybe I didn’t want…” he trails off, but he shoots Mike a sidelong look, and Mike fills in the gaps well enough. Maybe he didn’t want Mike to think he had a shot. Maybe he knew, at least subconsciously, and kept his distance.

Which, great. Another thing Mike’s stupid heart ruined. His best friend felt like had to keep this from him so that Mike wouldn’t jump him. Great.

They pull into the driveway, and Mike throws the car into park, but neither of them get out.

“So now, what, twenty years later it’s a thing?” Mike grumbles. He could have lived out the rest of his life, not knowing this. Not knowing how Jeff’s lips felt, how Jeff’s hand felt against the back of his neck, tipping his head up to face Jeff. “Because what, nostalgia? I told you a big secret, and—”

“Mike.” Mike looks over, surprised by the use of his name. Jeff’s looking at him, that same look he’s been shooting Mike for days. Weeks, maybe. “There aren’t _many _guys I’m into.”

And—oh. Mike gets that look now, knows why it was almost familiar, why he recognized it but couldn’t. That’s how Jeff looks when he likes what he sees. Mike’s seen it pointed at countless women, seen how Jeff’s eyes would go dark and his lips would curl, and Mike would glower and grumble and not be able to look away.

“Seriously?” Mike asks. His voice comes out hoarse. “Twenty fucking years, and now you make a move?”

Jeff shrugs. “You weren’t talking to me for ten of them.”

“That’s not the—” Mike huffs. He steals another glance at Jeff, though. Jeff, who’s still watching Mike. Mike had spent way too long, imagining what it might feel like to be on the other end of that look. To know that he was what Jeff wanted. “Really?”

Jeff nods. “If you want,” he says, like that’s a question, like he’s not sure, and—

“God, you’re so fucking stupid,” Mike grumbles, then grabs Jeff’s shirt to tug him across the gearshift.

Jeff bites out a laugh that’s cut off when Mike kisses him. It’s not—this isn’t the fleeting thing on the ice, Jeff’s declaration. Mike’s been thinking about this for twenty years. He’s watched Jeff kiss countless women, and tried not let himself wonder until he was in the safety of his room.

Now he knows. Now he knows Jeff kisses like he does everything else, with a sort of casual, easy confidence and competence, that gives easily to Mike when Mike starts pushing. demanding. Mike needs to know—needs to know everything. How the noises Jeff makes when he’s kissed sound this close. How every part of the inside of Jeff’s mouth tastes. How Jeff’s stubble feels, scraping against his cheeks. How Jeff shudders, when Mike bites at his jaw, his neck; how Jeff’s hands grab at his shoulders.

It’s not enough. It’s not nearly enough. Mike needs to get closer—he tries to shift, and hits the horn.

The sound jolts them both back.

“Fuck,” Jeff says, articulately. Mike always knew Jeff looked good after he’d been well-kissed, because Mike’s seen it so many times, as Jeff sauntered back to the table at a club looking smug and messy, and Mike had reeled him in and shoved a beer at him, and contented himself with the fact that it was almost enough, that Jeff came back to him. That looks is a thousand times better, when it’s Mike who made it appear on Jeff’s face. “Making out in cars was a lot easier when I was sixteen.”

“Inside,” Mike growls, and Jeff chuckles, and gets out of the car. Mike does the same. He doesn’t know how Jeff can laugh, how he can be so—chill about this. Mike is burning.

It helps, that Jeff’s going inside as fast as his long legs can carry him. Mike waits just a second, just so he can look, and then follows him.

The door’s barely closed before Jeff’s kissing him against it, Mike’s back to the door. Mike falls into it, until,

“You’re too fucking tall,” he mutters, because his back’s starting to hurt and Jeff’s has to even more, because he leaning down more than Mike’s leaning up.

“Maybe you’re too short,” Jeff retorts, smirking when Mike glares at that.

Mike tilts his head, drags his eyes over Jeff’s body, watches Jeff shiver at it. “Height doesn’t matter much when you’re on your knees,” he says, smiling a little mean. “Is that what you want?”

“Rich—” Jeff groans. He’s getting hard enough that Mike can see it, bulging in his pants.

“Bet it’s been a while since you’ve blown someone,” Mike goes on. “If you ever have.” He likes that, the idea that he gets something of Jeff no one else has gotten.

Jeff’s breath is harsh, and the color’s high in his cheeks, and what they can do here isn’t enough. Mike’s not twenty anymore, and he wants more than this. “Upstairs,” he demands.

Jeff grins, as he steps away. His eyes are still blown out, all dark. “Yeah? Are we that fancy, now?”

“I’m having mercy on your old man knees.”

“Nah, I think you want to be romantic,” Jeff teases, and even that’s—Mike’s not really one for laughing, at times like these, but of course Jeff knows how to goad him, where to hit that doesn’t hurt.

“You’re the one who spent the last decade married,” Mike retorts. “Don’t you know how boring sex works?”

“Fuck you,” Jeff says, companionably, but he steps back to go towards the stairs.

“Hm, maybe,” Mike agrees, and he doesn’t have to be able to see Jeff’s face to see him react to that. Maybe. He wants that, but he also wants to fuck Jeff, and he wants to see if he can get Jeff to fall apart with his mouth, and he wants Jeff on his knees, and he wants—everything.

They make it upstairs, then into Mike’s bedroom. Mike herds Arnold out from where he was sleeping on the dog bed in the corner—he doesn’t feel very bad about it, Arnie should want his dad to get laid—then he closes the door behind him.

Jeff’s standing in the middle of the room. Mike blinks. This feels like a dream, like something that doesn’t happen to him. Life isn’t fair, but maybe this time—maybe this time it’s not fair in his direction, and the thing he’d never believed could happen did. He wants—fuck, he wants too much, he wants everything, he doesn’t know where to start, how to start. What do you do, when you get a gift long after you’d ever thought it was possible? What do you do?

“Richie,” Jeff says, low, and Mike looks, focuses. Jeff’s biting his lip, all the uncertainty from that moment on the ice back in his face, and—Mike might not know what to do for himself, but he can figure it out for Jeff.

“Come here,” he demands, but he meets Jeff in the middle, to kiss him again, harder this time, with purpose. There’s no irritating car logistics in the way now; Mike can kiss him as hard and demanding as he wants, can get his hands at the bottom of Jeff’s shirt and tug it over his head. Jeff gets his hands on it too, strips it off, throws it somewhere, and it’s good to feel Jeff’s skin against Mike’s hands, but Mike wants more. He gets the buckle of Jeff’s jeans undone, then shoves them down, taking Jeff’s boxers with them.

Jeff steps out of them, shameless—he always has been, Mike remembers, so irritatingly confident in how good he looked and that people wanted him. And so irritatingly right, at least this time.

Mike takes his time, anyway, looks his fill—years, decades, of not looking, making sure he wasn’t looking, no more than was acceptable, and now he can look as much as he wants. Now Jeff’s watching him look, and Mike can see how much it’s working for him. It’s working for Mike, too—Jeff might not be twenty-five anymore and at the peak of his fitness, but he’s still all legs and tanned skin over taut muscle and maybe there’s more padding around his waist but Mike doesn’t care—it’s Jeff. It’s Jeff, with his dick hard for Mike.

“Have you?” he asks, suddenly. Jeff raises his eyebrows in question. “Blown someone before,” Mike clarifies.

Jeff shrugs. “Do you want me to say no?” he asks.

“I want you to tell the truth.” Mike wants to know. He wants to know all the things Jeff hadn’t told him, felt like he couldn’t; those ten years of things Jeff hadn’t said. He wants Jeff to tell him everything he’s done in minute detail and then do it back to Jeff, better. He wants to make Jeff to forget everything he’d done before. 

“Then, yeah, a few times. Not for like 10 years, though.”

Mike swallows. It’s—surprisingly hot, the thought of Jeff as he was ten years ago, fifteen, blowing someone. Probably in the dark corners of clubs, secret places where no one would find them. Mike had done his share of that, but the thought of Jeff kneeling in a corner…

“I’m not blowing you on hardwood floors,” Jeff interrupts, like he followed Mike’s train of thought. “My knees won’t take it.”

Mike snorts. “Princess,” he complains, and shoves. Jeff lets him push him back onto the bed, then scoots back so he’s sprawled there, spread out over Mike’s bedspread. “Is this better, then?”

“Depends if you’re ever going to get your clothes off,” Jeff retorts. One of his hands is behind his head, so it rests on his forearm; the other hand is reaching down to stroke his dick as he looks at Mike.

Mike growls, and shucks off his clothes so he can get on the bed and knock Jeff’s hand away. Jeff moves his hand, but then he’s pulling Mike in, kissing him again, and his hands are moving over Mike’s body, a slow thorough exploration that leaves Mike kissing Jeff harder just to feel like he has some control of this. Jeff arches into it, just as enthusiastic, and when Mike makes his way down to suck at his neck he can feel Jeff shiver. Can feel the way his hands falter on Mike’s back.

Mike grins to himself, then keeps going—down Jeff’s chest, his stomach, to his dick. Another time, he might have been more leisurely, taken his time, but he can’t. He’s always been goal oriented. Including—especially—when his goal is Jeff’s dick.

Jeff groans when Mike touches it. It’s—the sound’s haunted Mike’s dreams, for all he tried to forget, a remnant of those times they’d picked up together and Mike had heard it and wondered what the girl was doing to make him sound like that. Now it’s his sound. Now he strokes Jeff’s dick and watches, feels, as Jeff moans and squirms. Now he knows how Jeff’s dick feels in his hand.

It’s not enough. He edges down the bed more, and then licks up Jeff’s dick.

“Fuck, Richie.” Jeff’s head is back against the pillow when Mike looks up, his fists clenched at his sides, and Mike grins and gets to it.

Mike’s had a lot of sex, and done a lot of things that looking back were stupid as fuck for a professional athlete, and a lot more things that were just stupid, full stop.

None of that compares to what it feels like, making Jeff fall apart with his mouth and his hands. Mike’s learned a thing or two in his time, even if he’s not exactly hooking up a lot out here, and Jeff’s so fucking responsive—not a talker, but he’s loud anyway, all groans and whines, and Mike has to get a hand on his hips to pin him down so he doesn’t fuck up Mike’s throat. He goes still at that, totally, and that’s—something Mike’s going to think about, definitely, when he can. But now he can feel Jeff’s thighs shaking and when he glances up he can see every bit of desperation on Jeff’s face. It’s—he’s not sure it’s better than how Jeff looked when they won the first Cup, but he thinks it might come close.

“Come on, Rich, I’m gonna—” he mumbles. Because Mike’s a dick, or because the sound of Jeff’s voice all strung out like that goes right to his dick, or just because he wants this to last, Mike slows down, and Jeff swears. It doesn’t discourage Mike at all. He’s so fucking hard too, but—he wants to see how far he can get Jeff to go.

“Come on, please, I need to—fuck, please,” Jeff’s muttering now, and Mike still takes his time, seeing if he can keep Jeff on that edge, where he’s staring down at Mike with dark desperate eyes like there’s nothing in his world but Mike. It makes Mike make his own low, desperate sound around Jeff’s dick, and Jeff’s whole body tenses.

“Mike, please, I need—” he says, and maybe it’s the begging, maybe it’s Mike’s name on his lips, like there’s nothing left, but Mike relents, wraps his hand around the base and sucks hard at the tip, and then Jeff’s coming, on a quiet groan that’s the best thing Mike’s ever heard.

Mike doesn’t want to stop, so he swallows, Mike keeps sucking until Jeff’s noises turn a little pained. Then he pulls off, wipes his mouth. He’s so fucking hard, he needs—

“Come here,” Jeff says, asks, his voice hoarse, and Mike does, surging back up to kiss him. Jeff tilts his face down for it, still lazy with his orgasm, but Mike’s not fucking waiting. His dick is rubbing against Jeff’s thigh and that could almost be enough, just the friction and how deep Jeff is kissing him, but it’s not. It will never be, maybe. Mike wants to devour Jeff whole, wants all of him, wants to kiss him until neither of them can breathe with it.

Then Jeff’s hand’s around his dick and that’s even better, fuck, Jeff’s hands are a little clumsy but as good as Mike has dreamed about, his stupid soft fucking hands and how well he knows Mike even now, knows what he needs.

Mike’s talking, he thinks, babbling something about Jeff’s hands and how much he wants this, and he can feel Jeff’s smile and that’s the thing that’s somehow too much, so he moves from Jeff’s mouth to his neck, his shoulder, where he can bite at it to keep from saying all the stupid shit that’s there, where he can think instead about how Jeff’s going to have a mark, his mark, and—

It’s Jeff’s hand and the thought and Jeff’s breath in his ear and then Mike’s coming, onto Jeff’s hand and his stomach and Mike buries his head in Jeff’s shoulders so it won’t be clear how much he’s shaking, how much it’s gotten out of him.

Jeff lets him lie there, his other hand in Mike’s hair, his face tilted in so his temple’s resting against Mike’s. Mike can feel them breathe together, until it’s almost unbearable, the thought that that’ll have to end.

Mike moves to roll off of Jeff. Jeff’s hand tightens in Mike’s hair.

“We’re gonna stick together if we stay like this,” Mike points out.

Jeff sighs, but he lets go, so Mike can roll over, to lie next to Jeff. Their hands are brushing.

They just had sex. Mike just had sex with Carts. He hadn’t—twenty years of dreaming, probably as long convinced it couldn’t happen. That he couldn’t have this part of Jeff. But—here he is. He’d sucked Jeff’s dick. He knows what it tastes like now. He knows what Jeff sounds like, when it’s not a bed away, when it’s Mike making him make those noises. And he can find out more. That was good, Jeff definitely thought it was good, Mike can find out—what Jeff sounds like blowing Mike, fucking Mike, being fucked. All of the ways Mike can take Jeff into pieces and build him back together again.

“Twenty fucking years,” Mike says, at last. He glances over at Jeff, but it’s hard to look at him for long, stretched out looking fucked out and with Mike’s cum on him and a bruise on his shoulder.

“But worth the wait,” Jeff replies, and Mike knows that tone, the earnest smile that definitely goes with it. “Right?” And there’s the hint of a question, like he doesn’t know that Mike’s feeling taken out at the knees for more than one reason. That Mike’s heart is—

“Go clean yourself up, you’re gross,” he mutters.

Jeff chuckles. “You go get me a washcloth, it’s your fault.”

“My _fault_? You were into it too.”

“Not as much as you,” Jeff retorts, and Mike rolls his eyes but gets up. He goes to the bathroom, grabs a wet washcloth, takes a second to quickly grab some mouthwash.

When he gets back to the bedroom, he pauses. Jeff’s stretched out over the bed, his hands behind his head, still flushed and loose-limbed and messy. Mike can definitely see the bruise—bruises—that are going to come in. That’s Mike’s, now. Mike did that. Not some girl at a club, not his wife, not someone else that Jeff will go out and fuck and then come back to Mike looking like this—this is Mike’s. This is going to be Mike’s. 

Jeff glances up at Mike, and then he smiles, that big open smile, and that’s Mike’s too, he thinks. The way Jeff’s looking at Mike now, warm and pleased and happy, so happy, like Mike hasn’t seen him since his kids left. Mike did that. Mike had always known he could, that he could make Jeff happy. He could be what Jeff needed. 

“If you’re just going to stare, could you toss me the washcloth or something?” Jeff asks, but his smile says he doesn’t mind. Mike huffs out a breath, throws the washcloth at him, and then goes back over to the bed.

Jeff’s still got that smile on was he wipes himself off, as Mike gets back onto the bed next to him. Mike gets it. He can’t remember the last time he felt like this—the first Cup win, maybe. Before the concussions started to take their toll, before the only way to manage them was Oxy. Before Jeff met Meg. He remembers waking up, the morning after the win, and—they’d gotten so fucking drunk, apparently Jeff hadn’t made it back to his bed, Mike still doesn’t know. All he knows is he’d waken up and Jeff had been asleep next to him and Mike had remembered—everything, the win and the fate that had brought them back together again and Jeff screaming at him the evening before and how the night before Jeff hadn’t picked up, he’d spent the whole night tucked tight against Mike, like he couldn’t believe it either, like he wanted Mike close, and Mike had felt like—like this was _right_. Like this was him finally fitting right into the world.

That’s how he feels now. Well, sort of; a lot of shit has happened. And he can’t say that it’s worth it if it got them here. But it still sort of feels like that—like this is right. Jeff in bed next to him, the ghost of Jeff’s hands on Mike’s skin. The two of them together, again, like they’re supposed to be.

_You know he’s going to go home, right? _Mike hears Matt’s voice, and—fuck, he knows. Knows and—

He remembers what came after that night after the Cup, too. The spiral. How fitting right into the world had changed until the world needed him to be something other than what he’d become, and Jeff didn’t need him at all, and Mike could claw him back a little but he was going. What all that had led to, and he hadn’t even known what Jeff’s mouth felt like. Mike had been so happy, but then—Mike doesn’t want to go there again. He’s better, now, here, with his lake and his dog and his projects and his boat. Jeff’s—Jeff isn’t a part of that. Or he won’t be for long.

Mike takes a long, slow breath. Fucking hell. Of course. Of course life can’t be fair, can’t let him have this one good thing. He knows what he has to do, the only way to take care of himself, of both of them, but, god. It fucking hurts.

“You’ve got to go,” he says. His voice is raspy, though he can’t know if it’s from the blow job or because the words scrape over his throat.

Jeff’s still smiling, even as he snorts. “I know kicking them out after you fuck them is your MO, Rich, but really?” 

Mike swallows. “Really.”

Jeff lets out a long breath, but he rolls his eyes, starts to get up. “Fine, if you’re that prissy about your sleep—”

“Not just—you’ve got to go home, Jeff. To LA.”

Jeff freezes. Mike can see the muscles of his back work, the tension in his jaw. He knows what Jeff looks like when he just took a hit.

“What?” he says, his voice tight.

“You’ve got to go home,” Mike repeats. He curls his hands into fists. “You’ve got to leave.”

“Are you serious?” Jeff’s up and he turns, and his face is twisted, anger and pain and fear and disbelief. “You’re kicking me out?”

“I—yeah.”

“What, because we had sex?”

“Sort of.”

“I thought you were in love with me!” Jeff says, and it’s half anger and half just—confusion. “You said—”

“I know.” Mike—he can’t look at Jeff. Not now. Fuck, he wants to, but—he can’t. He looks down at his hands instead. “But…I don’t know how to love you in a healthy way.”

“What the fuck does _that_ mean?”

“That means that you’re going to go back to LA eventually and I’ll get—it won’t be good, Carts, I’ll be jealous all the fucking time and it’ll drive me insane and the last time I felt like I was losing you my whole fucking life fell apart.” Mike looks up. Jeff’s staring at him, wide-eyed, and that cocktail of emotions is still written all over him. “I can’t do that again.”

“Then you’ll come to LA, or—”

“I can’t go to LA, I can’t deal with that. I need to be here. And you don’t, so you need to go now before it gets worse.” Mike’s voice maybe gets a little snippy at the end, but Jeff needs to fucking get it. He’s doing this so that they can keep what they have. Mike’s taking care of himself—and of Jeff, because this would be bad for Jeff too, if Mike got let loose. “This is the only way I can—”

“Fuck you.” Mike blinks. Apparently, Jeff’s settled on anger. “Fuck you, you’re kicking me out just because you’re scared?”

“I’m not scared,” Mike snaps back. He gets to his feet too—grabs for some sweatpants, because he finds he doesn’t want to be naked for this. “I’m doing fucking self-care. And I’m taking care of you because that’s what I—”

“No, you’re being a dick because you’re scared,” Jeff cuts him off. He apparently doesn’t feel the need to be dressed for this. “You’ve been hiding up here for ten fucking years, and—”

“Seriously? I’m recovering—”

“And now you’re hiding!” Jeff takes a step forward, doing his thing where he suddenly fills up the room, where he makes you remember how tall he is. “You barely do anything, you’re fucking stuck here because you’re too afraid to go back into the world, and now you won’t even try this because you’re too—”

“I’m too scared?” Mike crosses his arms over his chest so he can glare. Fuck him. “I’m not the one who jumped into bed with me because I’m too scared to be on my own!”

“What?” Jeff looks honestly confused.

Mike snorts, as meanly as he can. “Come on, Carts. You went from me to Meg and now you know I’m a sure thing so here you are again.”

“Don’t be a—”

“You said it yourself, you miss being married.” Mike throws it at him. It feels good, in a perverse way. He’s good at this too. At making Jeff hurt. “You always need someone, don’t you? Guess it’s easier if you’re sleeping with them too, and I’m just so easy, you knew you could keep me hooked if—”

“Fuck you.” Jeff’s still puffed up. Mike stares him down. Mike’s always stared him down. Mike can stare him down when he doesn’t know what else he’s doing, when everything feels like he’s on autopilot. “At least I admit I need people. You can’t even do that.”

“Because I don’t—”

“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that,” Jeff snaps, and the fury in his gaze feels like a knife. “You have no idea what being in love is.”

That’s too fucking far. “Don’t you—”

“You don’t love me,” Jeff keeps going, and Mike makes a sound that comes out like a growl. “You won’t fucking tell me anything, you won’t let me help—”

“Oh we’re back to this?” Mike sneers. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you when I was busy detoxing and getting fucking arrested, your feelings were really what I was thinking about—”

“Love goes both ways!” Jeff yells. “It’s not—”

“And how’s your marriage going, then?” Mike interrupts. “If you’re such an expert?”

Jeff flinches, full body. “At least I’m not a fucking coward,” he throws back, then bends over to grab the pair of pants closest to him, and turns on his heel.

“I’m not a—where are you going?” Mike demands. There are marks on Jeff’s back, too. That feels very long ago.

“I’m leaving. That’s what you wanted, right?” Jeff glances over his shoulder. He’s so clearly hurt beneath the anger and not bothering to try to hide it. “To run away from this too.”

“I’m not—” Jeff slams the door shut behind him before Mike can finish the sentence.

Mike stares at the door. Fuck. He was—fuck him, fuck Jeff Carter and his fucking big hurt eyes and Mike is not a fucking coward, he’s doing what he’s always done and making the hard fucking choices for both of them, he can’t—fuck, he wants something to make this easier, he could—he can’t—Jeff doesn’t get it, he can’t, Jeff with his charmed life—

Mike sits down on the bed. Some time later, he hears the front door shut, then a car start, and drive away.

Well, Mike thinks drily, alone in his house. He’s finally figured out what it’ll take to make Jeff leave.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so we come to the end! I hope you enjoy.
> 
> Also, a warning: it has come to my attention that Drew Doughty has had some allegations against him that mean people would like to avoid him. This chapter has a section in which he appears; it will become pretty clear where it begins, and you can skip to the next section without missing too much. This isn't any sort of statement of support on my part; it's just the peril of writing a fic where you know literally nothing about a team other than 5 year old fics and I had no idea that there were unsavory things about him, I just picked someone at random who fulfilled certain criteria. See the author's note at the end for a slightly spoilery continuation of this.

The house is very empty, when he goes downstairs at last, too hungry to stay in his room. It shouldn’t be—Jeff’s only one person, and it’s not like he takes up a lot of space. But the house does feel empty. Arnold wanders up to him, noses at his side like he wants to know where Jeff is.

“It’s better this way,” Mike tells him. Arnold looks skeptical. “It’s better,” Mike says again. Being here—this is how Mike stays healthy. This is how he doesn’t turn into the parts of him that he doesn’t like. This is how he keeps Jeff, in some way. So now he’ll know forever, what Jeff felt like under him, how he tastes. How it felt to really, really make Jeff happy. He can have that. And everything else—

Well. He’s used to being alone. He likes it that way.

* * *

Mike tells his parents that Jeff went home to be with the kids. His mom shakes her head, but doesn’t ask more. Matt gives him a look like he thinks something more happened, but Mike doesn’t say anything when he asks and he doesn’t push it. There’s no one else Mike needs to explain things too, so he doesn’t—a mention at the dog park, that the blonde guy isn’t coming in anymore, a word to the woman at the café Jeff’s apparently befriended, who looks crestfallen in a way Mike gets too well, and that’s it. Jeff’s gone.

It would almost be like he was never there, except he’s there everywhere. The shit he left behind, packing so quickly. _Do you want me to ship your stuff to you? _Mike texts. There’s no answer. The leftover kale that only Jeff ate because LA had gotten to him very thoroughly sits in the fridge, uneaten. Most of the food he’d bought sits there uneaten, because Mike doesn’t feel like cooking it. The other side of the couch has pillows Mike can’t bring himself to rearrange. Mike keeps forgetting to turn the coffee on in the morning, because Jeff always did. There’s still a spare pair of safety glasses sitting on a table in the workshop, waiting for Jeff to come back in.

Mike has a bad day, and everything aches and hurts but he has to get up, has to drag himself through it despite the blinding pain until he finds himself lying on the couch in the middle of the day, Arnie licking at his hand, and thinking of Jeff’s hand in his hair. He has a not bad day, just a day where he’s in a shitty mood, and—it spirals, in a way it hasn’t. He’d forgotten, maybe, how much Jeff knew how to defuse him.

But he’s fine. This is how life is, and if Mike knows how to do anything, it’s take life as it is.

“So how do you feel about it?” Dr. Farella asks. Her shirt’s a bright orange today, shocking against the brown of her skin. Almost Flyers orange, which feels like some sort of irony.

“About what?” Mike asks. He’s just finished telling her about—well, the whole saga, from Jeff kissing him in the ice rink to him leaving. With some skimming, in between. There are things in there that Mike needs to keep for himself: the way Jeff had looked at him, how Jeff had melted into his kiss, how he had smiled after. That’s just for Mike. _Just _for Mike, Mike wants to think; no one else could get Jeff like that, not really. They don’t know Jeff like he does.

Dr. Farella’s eyebrows go up, just a hint. Like she gets Mike’s bullshitting, and she’s not going to call him on it but she wants him to know she knows. “About Jeff leaving.”

“He was always going to.” Mike knew that. “It was—the fight was bad, but I’m not wrong. He needed to go back to LA, and I can’t.”

She hums, and writes something on her pad. “And that’s why you confronted him immediately?”

“I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t—I’m not sure I could have done it, if I’d waited longer.” Even now, Jeff’s face is there, hurt and angry and all the things Mike had sworn he’d never cause Jeff to feel. “I know it’s for the best. But…”

“Why is it for the best?”

Mike shrugs. “He was always going to go back to LA,” he repeats. “And I…don’t do well with losing him. Like I’ve said.”

“Yes, you have,” she agrees. It’s the sort of agreement that puts Mike on edge.

“Last time I felt like I was losing Carts, I managed to get hooked on Oxy,” he snaps. “That’s why I’m here at all, remember?”

“I remember why you’re here.” She makes another irritatingly calm mark on her pad. “So your addiction is Jeff’s fault?”

“It’s not his _fault_, it’s just—what Carts does to me.” She knows that, and Mike gets that she’s making him say it, but—he knows it too. Maybe it was mixed together in the beginning, but he’s there now. “Last time it happened, I took ten years to get over it. I don’t want to do that. And I don’t want to lose him again. It’s better for both of us.”

“So how’s he doing, then?”

Mike shifts. “He’s not answering my texts.” She gives him a look, but, “He’s sulking, it’s what he does,” Mike tells her, testily. “He’ll get over it.” She keeps looking. It’s been weeks. Jeff’s sulked before, but—not this long, not at Mike. Normally Jeff’s sulks involved Mike getting increasingly bitchy texts until he got his head out of his ass or Mike went over and dragged him out. Not this silence. Even after—for the past ten years, it hasn’t been silence, not really. Jeff replied, when Mike finally decided he could handle talking to Jeff, and had texted him some bullshit about his game. “He’ll get over it,” Mike repeats. Then, because he hates how much he sounds like he doesn’t believe it, he adds, “And fuck him if he doesn’t. I was trying to do what’s best for my mental health. If he doesn’t get that, fuck him.”

“That’s true,” Dr. Farella agrees, though not in a tone that makes Mike confident she really does agree.

“Isn’t that what you’ve always said?” Mike snaps at her. “That I have to take care of myself? That I—” he makes his voice go a little higher, so she gets he’s imitating her, “need to take stock and determine what’s me wanting things?”

“I did, and I still do.” She rests her pad on her knees, then fixes Mike with a look. “But let’s go back to why you fought. You haven’t fought much, have you?”

“We fight—” Mike takes a breath. “No,” he says. They don’t. Mike fights with everyone, always has, but Jeff somehow slips around that. Or takes it, or ignores it. “No, we don’t—didn’t. Not much.”

“So why did you fight this time?”

“Because Jeff was being—unreasonable. And being an asshole. And not—getting it,” Mike waves a hand, like that’ll encompass everything Jeff didn’t get. “This is why I never told him. He can’t get it. He doesn’t—I’m not _scared_. Why would I be scared?”

“Why would you be scared?”

“I’m not, that’s the point.”

“Mike.” She uncrosses her legs, then recrosses them in the opposite way. “Do you remember what you told me, when I first asked about why you hadn’t talked to Jeff?”

“That I couldn’t handle him too. That he was too…much. I couldn’t handle everything he brought up.” Mike honestly doesn’t remember everything from that time, from the haze of detoxing and anger and legal discussions that left him exhausted and ignoring his phone for everything else. But he knows that much.

Except she shakes her head. “Not quite.” She taps a note on her pad with the end of her pen. “Of course everything with Jeff has a lot of layers, for you. But what you also told me is that you couldn’t talk to him because he knew you too well.” She taps her pen again, but her dark eyes are fixed on Mike. “What I got from that was that you didn’t want to face what he’d see in you, because it might be true.”

Mike swallows. She’s not—fuck, she’s not wrong. He needed Jeff to keep trusting him, to keep believing in him, because as long as Jeff believed it that was what was true about Mike. Mike had always thought he’d known who he was, but when he was in flux, when he was doubting that—Jeff had known him longer, better, deeper than anyone. He could still be the person Jeff knew he was.

Dr. Farella nods, like she gets all that. “So. Assuming that—or at least that Jeff knows you well enough that there are reasons he might think things, even if he’s wrong—why might he have thought you were scared?”

“He said it was because I said I couldn’t go to LA.”

Dr. Farella hums.

Mike glares. “I can’t,” he repeats. “I’m handling everything here, but LA has a whole other fucking barrel of shit, I don’t want to reopen that, when everything went so badly last time.”

“You are handling everything here. You have been, for ten years.” She taps her pen again. “You know what I think, about your tendency to isolate.”

“Oh I know.” She’s been on him about it for months, years. “But—LA’s not just a walk in the park.”

“No, it’s definitely not,” she agrees. “But you’ve been getting out more. Skating, even.”

“Yeah, because Jeff—” Mike cuts himself off, then forces himself to continue. “Because Jeff wanted to.”

“And how has that been?”

Mike shrugs. It’s been—fine. Not really an issue. But going to Kenora isn’t going to LA.

“Okay. Let’s put that aside for a second. What if Jeff lived somewhere else, somewhere with no associations. Let’s say he was based in Winnipeg. Would you still have told him to leave?”

“I—” No, he wants to say. That would have been simpler. Not easy, and Mike still hates cities, but—Winnipeg isn’t LA, it isn’t.

“Think about it for a second,” she prompts. A car passes by the window, and Mike thinks. Thinks to that moment, to seeing Jeff in his bed, smiling so bright. To how it had felt when they were fucking, when he’d wanted so much. How it had felt when they fought.

“Maybe,” he admits. “Yeah.”

“And if it was someone else who needed you in Los Angeles—say, if your cousin, the one moving there, needed help—would you go?”

Mike grits his teeth, but— “Yeah,” he says again, because he would. If Nell needed his help, he would go, even if it was in LA. He’d deal with it, if necessary. Fuck.

She smiles. It’s a disconcertingly predatory smile, which perversely settles Mike. “Okay then,” she says, satisfied. She settles back in her chair. “So if it’s not LA itself that you’re scared of, what are you scared of?”

“I’m not scared,” Mike repeats. He’s not a coward.

“But if you were, why might you be?” She raises her eyebrows, like she’s ready to wait him out on this shit.

“Because—” Fuck, Mike hates this, but—“Because it’s Jeff,” he says, and glares. “Because he’s fucking terrifying.”

“Why?”

Mike’s fists clench again. Ten years, and he still hates talking about this shit. Hates saying it. “Because—I love him. I’ve loved him for so long and it got so fucked.” And now Jeff thinks he can just say he doesn’t—but what does Jeff know?

“Sure,” she agrees. “There are other people you love. Your family.”

“But that’s not Jeff.” Mike glances away, down at his hands. Twists them. Thinks of how they’d been holding Jeff, weeks ago. “I—god, I needed him, like—like breathing, and then he wasn’t there and I replaced him with a lot of bad fucking choices. And if I let that happen again—and we start fucking too—” start doing more than fucking, his brain fills in, thinking about Jeff’s smile, about how Jeff had kissed him, light and easy, about the easy way they live together—“I don’t know if I could handle that,” he admits, and that hurts plenty. He needs to be able to handle that. To handle himself.

“Mike.” Dr. Farella’s voice is quiet but not gentle. Mike makes himself meet her gaze. “You are not the man you were ten years ago.”

“No fucking duh.”

“You are stronger, and you’ve done the work to manage your addiction and mental and physical health.”

“Great, but—”

“And,” she goes on, “Your relationship with Jeff Carter is not what it was ten years ago.”

Mike’s mouth shuts. She keeps that steady gaze fixed on him. “That’s not a negative. You’re both different people. You’ve grown apart in ways that are, frankly, healthy for both of you. What your relationship was does not have to be what it is.”

He knows, but, “I still want him, though. It’s still as—much, as it was.”

Her lips curl, just a little. “You’re allowed to be attracted to a man. To a man you’re romantically interested in.”

“It’s not attraction, it’s—I get so fucking jealous, and possessive.”

“And those aren’t healthy, it’s true, but they are natural. And you let him go regardless, for both of your sakes, which is more than a lot of people would do. Which is more than you would have done before, I’m guessing.”

“Why are you trying to talk me into this?” Mike demands, suddenly. His hands are curling on his thighs. “Aren’t you supposed to be there to keep me from going out and trying to smuggle another trunk full of Oxy over the border? That’s what I fucking do when things go bad with Jeff!”

Dr. Farella looks utterly unmoved by his outburst. Not in the way Jeff does, sometimes, when Mike’s being a dick to him and he just blinks at it, like he gets what Mike’s saying underneath it, like he’s not taking it personally. She just looks like a stone wall. She would have made a great goalie, Mike can’t help but think. Blood like ice. “That was a factor,” she agrees. “You were also dealing with continuing symptoms of CTE and a crisis in your professional life, both of which, as well as the significant changes in your personal life with Jeff, contributed to your continued feelings of losing control.”

“But—”

“You’ve just gone from living with Jeff for over two months to him cutting you out,” she cuts off his protest. It hits like a fucking puck to the head, the nakedness of that statement. “Do you want to take anything?”

Mike blinks. “No more than normal.” He lets out a long breath. He doesn’t. It’s not—it’s always there, because it’s always going to be there, but it’s not—more. It sucks, everything sucks, but it’s not like it was before, when everything was splintering and Mike was clutching whatever he could to him with increasingly desperate claws. When it felt like he was being left with nothing. It just—sucks. Because things are better, with Jeff there.

Dr. Farella smiles again, cat got the cream. “Needing people doesn’t necessarily mean you’re codependent,” she says. “And being happy and fulfilled doesn’t mean you’ll lose control of it.”

Mike scowls, breathes in. “I might, though.” He hadn’t thought everything would turn to shit before, either.

“You might,” the doctor agrees. Mike snorts. Great fucking vote of confidence. “You might just be happy, too.”

* * *

Mike goes home.

Mike goes home, and then he goes out to the back patio, so he can sit and watch the lake. Arnold comes slowly out after him, lies down with his head on Mike’s foot. Mike runs a hand over the fur of his head.

He loves it here. He’s always loved it here, in a way he never loved anywhere else. Oh, he had loved Philly’s promises to him, and the miracle of LA and what it had given him, but it’s not here. It’s not home, this lake and the quietness around it. Mike could, he thinks, live out the rest of his life here, and be content.

But. He thinks about LA, about what it had felt like those last months, bouncing between it and Manchester, when every moment in LA felt like something cruel and taunting, the life he wasn’t living, everything he wasn’t. LA’s not to blame for what happened, he thinks, but it’s not _not_ to blame either—the searing brightness, how easy some things are to get, how easy it was to disappear, to lose himself. Jeff had loved it for that brightness, he thinks, for the miracle and the sun and the sprawl and the beaches and the random neighborhoods that appeared like islands across the desert and all the people for him to fall into. Mike had never really understood that, how Jeff had barely needed to be there a month before he was fully LA. 

It wasn’t all bad, though, Mike admits. He’d liked the team. He’d liked the beach. He’d liked the house, and how the sun rose through the windows. He’d liked the Mexican food and the coffee shop on the way to the rink and the bar he and Jeff had made themselves regulars at, with the weird craft beers and the giant frozen margaritas he and Jeff pretended not to like. He’d liked having the team, his friends, around.

And…the house is very quiet, now. He could do this for the rest of his life—just him and his dog and his family when he wants it, maybe going into town. He thinks he could do that.

But. And there’s always the but. The but that is 6’4” with his stupid bright smile and the way he has of handling Mike even when Mike hates being handled and his bad habit of leaving glasses of water fucking everywhere and his commitment to weird-ass LA food and his achievement of being simultaneously the chillest and highest maintenance person ever and his moods and his devotion to his kids and how he says Mike’s name and how he knows Mike, too well, and somehow stuck around. Well, until now.

Mike sighs, and looks out at the lake. Wiggles at the feeling, of Jeff. Of what it might mean, to let himself need him again, if he can do it in a way that isn’t the all-consuming thing it was ten years ago. That’s just the love, without the bullshit around it. Of whether it’s too late.

Mike Richards is many things, he decides, pulling out his phone, but he’s not a coward.

* * *

It takes an irritatingly long time to get someone to give him an address. He knows that some of their old Kings teammates are still in LA enough that they know Jeff’s address, but most of them are insultingly reticent. Brownie even goes so far as to give Mike what sounds way more like the shovel talk than anyone who didn’t know they were sleeping together should give, and then he doesn’t even give Mike the fucking address. It’s bullshit, Mike thinks, grumpily staring at the airline website—he’d forgotten how ridiculously long and annoying flights to LA were—what do they think Mike’s going to do? Insult Jeff and say he’d just been manipulating Mike? Too little, too late. 

Mike’s in the Winnipeg airport waiting for his flight when finally, Toff texts him back. He should have known the kids would be where it’s at, even if he guesses Tyler’s not a kid anymore. But he still thinks of him as that kid trailing after Jeff with Tanner like ducklings. Maybe it’s the edge of admiration that Tyler had had for Mike then, or maybe it’s that he gets that Mike and Jeff are adults who can handle their shit, but either way Mike has an address by the time he takes off.

Flying is…it always sucks, and it’s been a while, and it’s a lot of noise in a contained space. But Mike grits his teeth and gets through it, then he’s in LAX, which is as always awful. Still, he’s got a fondness for the place, if only for the moment he’d seen Jeff off the plane for Columbus.

He does not have a fondness for LA traffic. Mike rents a car, because he doesn’t want to get stuck anywhere if Jeff’s really being a bitch, but that means he’s driving on the 405 and of course he hit rush hour and rush hour LA is absolutely the lowest circle of hell. 

But Mike grits his teeth and bears that too, and then he’s pulling up in front of a big, beachfront house. It’s not the same place he lived in when Mike last saw him in LA—Mike wonders if Meg got that place, if they’d moved at all, he’d somehow never asked Jeff—but it’s still very Jeff, with the beachfront views and big lawn and the way it’s too big for a family of four—or three—and the hockey net lying next to the garage like Caden had meant to put it away but hadn’t quite gotten there yet.

He gets out of the car, but leaves his shit in the trunk as he walks up to the front door. It’s been a long time since he had to knock to get into any house of Jeff’s, and it feels off, given how they’ve been living together. Mike bets he could find a spare key if he tried, but—he rings the bell.

There’s quiet for a second, then the sound of feet inside, then a pause, and then the door swings open.

Mike expects a scowling Carts, but instead, he has to glance down, at Emersyn, whose scowl is at stark odds with her red and blue polka dotted t-shirt thing.

“Hi.”

She glares suspiciously. “Why are you here?”

“To talk with your dad. Is he here?” He pauses, then, “Should you even be answering the door without him?”

She shrugs. “I saw it was you. Why do you want to talk to dad?”

What is it with everyone interrogating him? “We have stuff to talk about.”

Her hands go to her hips. “You said you wanted him to be happy, but he’s been in a bad mood ever since he got back.”

“Yeah, I’m—” Mike pushes down the satisfaction, that Jeff’s been feeling shitty too. 

“Mom says you were even more of an asshole than usual,” Emersyn goes on, leaning on the swear word a little, like a dare. Mike’s not going to be a hypocrite and call her on that, though, and keeps waiting. Her lips curve up for a second, then she remembers that she’s mad. “And that dad should stop waiting for you not to be.”

It’s nothing Mike doesn’t deserve, probably. “Your mom’s right a lot,” he says, which gets a shocked little noise out of her. “But—I’m trying to fix it, okay? I still…I still just want your dad happy.”

She’s still glaring, but there must be something in his face, because her hands relaxes a little. “I also heard dad say—”

“Em, you can’t open the door alone,” Jeff interrupts, his hand going around his daughter’s shoulders. He’s looking down at her, not at Mike.

“I saw it was Mike,” Emersyn objects. “He’s not a stranger.”

“Still. You’ve got to be careful.”

“I agree, dad,” She says, and shoots Mike a warning look. Mike has to bite down on a smile, despite himself. He can respect that sort of fierce protective instinct.

Jeff shakes his head, a little rueful. “Okay. Can you go into the backyard with Cade?”

“But—”

“Richie and I need to talk,” Jeff says, and he looks up at Mike for the first time.

It feels like a lot, though Jeff hasn’t changed since a few weeks ago, though Jeff’s been looking at Mike for over twenty years now. But this is a new expression, confusion and fear and anger and wariness and happiness all there. How does Jeff feel so much at once? Mike can barely have more than two emotions at a time.

“Fine.” Emersyn sighs like she’s been asked to run a marathon, then flounces off.

Jeff steps back so that Mike can come in, then, still unspeaking, heads into the house. Mike follows him into the living room, a bright room that overlooks the backyard and, beyond that, the beach. Mike can see Emersyn joining her brother and stealing his soccer ball out there.

Then Jeff turns, crosses his arms over his chest, and stares. He’s clearly still sulking, but Mike expected that. Mike knew that Jeff wasn’t just going to talk to him. It’s okay. Mike’s always been able to talk for both of them.

“So I hear I’ve been more of an asshole than usual,” he says, and Jeff snorts. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to for Mike to read the ‘duh’ on his face. “But Emersyn didn’t get a chance to tell me what you said about that.”

Jeff looks at him again, then lets out a long breath. “I’ve known you for a long fucking time, do you really think I don’t know you’re an asshole?” He sounds irritated about that fact. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I kind of like it.”

Something in Mike relaxes. He knew that, obviously, but—it is good to hear.

“Good,” Mike says anyway. “Because that’s probably not going to stop.”

Jeff rolls his eyes. “So did you come all the way here just to tell me you’re an asshole, before you disappear again? You can get back on a plane if—”

“No.” Mike swallows. He’s faced down guys a lot bigger than Jeff, but none of them have ever seemed so terrifying. “No. I came to say I was—I mean, that I didn’t—that I’m—” Fuck. Mike can say it. He just—

Jeff’s still pouting, but his eyes are getting a little wider. “Are you trying to _apologize_?” he asks, incredulous.

Mike glares. “Is that so impossible?”

“Yeah.” Jeff sounds very certain about it, and still skeptical. “That’s why you’re here?”

“Fuck off,” Mike mutters, then glances out the window to check that the kids are still there. They are. When he looks back at Jeff, Jeff’s still glaring him down. It doesn’t make it easier, but maybe it shouldn’t be. It’s not like Mike maybe doesn’t deserve it, a little. “I am, though.”

“You are what?”

Jeff’s going to make him say it, then. “I’m sorry.” Jeff’s eyebrows go way up. “There, I said it, happy?”

“Not if you don’t mean it,” Jeff snaps back. “If we’re really something you can’t do, and I was forcing you into something, or whatever, then don’t fucking apologize. Just tell me the truth.” 

“Do you really think you made me do anything I didn’t want?” Mike demands. Fuck that. Fuck Jeff and his Mike’s not really in love. He takes a step forward. “Anything I haven’t wanted for—fuck, forever?”

“Not make, but—” Jeff huffs out a breath, like he can’t find the words. He does another look out to the yard, where his kids are. “We both know I wanted it.”

“Why would that matter?”

Jeff’s lips twist, not happily. “Because you’ve always liked to take care of me.”

Mike flushes. It’s stark, to hear Jeff say it. To hear how clearly Jeff knows it. “And I can take care of myself, too,” he snaps, “Your dick’s not that good.”

“Apparently it was, if I was using it to keep you around.” Jeff throws back.

“You—” Mike pauses. Makes himself take a breath. Jeff’s never been the bigger person in a fight in his life, he’s going to have to be. He can be, for this. “I don’t really think that.”

“You still said it.”

“Yeah, because I was—” Mike clenches his fists, makes a face. He can say this too. “You weren’t wrong, either,” he says, and straightens his shoulders. Jeff’s amazed face is even bigger at that. “I am—I was—fuck, look. You know I’m shitty at letting people help me. And you’re worse, because you’re—it’s so easy to let you.” Mike gestures with his hands, hoping Jeff gets it—how Jeff gets _him_. “It’s so easy to need you, but I did that, Carts. I did that for years and it really fucked me up. Or it was part of it, or something.”

Jeff bites at his lip, but he nods, like he’s waiting for Mike to go on.

So Mike does. “I can’t need you like I did. But I can—maybe I can figure out a different way.”

“For how long?” Jeff asks, still sharp. “So you figure out a different way, and then something goes wrong and you kick me out again?”

“I won’t.”

“How can I know that?”

“Because I lo—”

“You did before too!” Jeff bites off at him. His cheeks are flushed now.

That’s—fair. Mike guesses. “Because a whole lot of other shit was going on too. But it’s different this time, I—”

“I thought that, okay? I thought that because we were—living together and it was good, and so I—but then you kicked me out anyway,” Jeff’s voice is getting sharper, because he gets quiet and bitchy when he’s really mad. “What’s different _this _time?”

“Nothing,” Mike snaps back. “Nothing, you just have to trust me.”

Jeff—pauses. Mike’s breath catches.

“Do you trust me?” he demands. He takes a step forward. He needs to hear this. “Do you?”

All at once, Jeff’s whole body seems to slump. “I don’t know,” he says, and wow, Mike’s heard a lot of people say really shitty things about him, but that’s the one that hurts the most.

But Mike knows what to do, when something hurts.

“Fine,” he says. “That’s fair.” Jeff’s eyebrows go up, surprised. Then, when Mike stalks out the door, the expression changes—surprise. Hurt. Resignation.

Well, fuck that. Mike marches outside, grabs his suitcase from the car, and then marches back inside, pounding on the door until Jeff opens it again. He was already rubbing a hand over his face, like he was exhausted again; when he sees Mike, he stops.

“Richie?”

“I’m not taking any spare room with bunkbeds,” Mike informs him. “I’m too old for that shit.”

Jeff blinks. “Rich—”

“You don’t trust me? Fine,” Mike goes on, before Jeff can say anything. “I’ll prove it to you.”

Jeff scowls, though Mike doesn’t think he’s entirely displeased. “If you really can’t deal with LA, you shouldn’t mess yourself up just to prove—”

“Richie!” Caden comes running in from the backyard, then spots Mike and runs at him, wrapping his arms around his waist. Mike sways for a second, surprised, but then he pats at his shoulder. “Em said you were here—are you staying with us?” he asks excitedly, clearly seeing Mike’s suitcase. “We can work on my shot more, I’ve gotten loads better since you saw me!”

Mike looks at Jeff. Jeff’s still scowling, but he glances at his very excited son, and shrugs, minisculely.

“Yeah,” Mike tells Caden, firmly. So Jeff gets what he means. “I’m staying.”

* * *

So Mike stays. Jeff does not put him in a bedroom with bunkbeds. Instead, he tells Caden to show him where the guest bedroom is, and then goes back outside, with Emersyn, leaving Caden to run upstairs to show Mike around.

The house is—what Mike expected and not at all. The kids’ shit is everywhere, and so is Jeff’s, sweatshirts and shoes and books and water glasses and all the shit that Jeff puts down and then forgets about immediately. But it’s sterile, too, somehow—this is clearly a house Jeff got furnished and hasn’t settled in yet. There’s nothing of Jeff in it, really, not like Mike’s house in LA when Jeff had moved in and immediately added his shit to Mike’s, not like Jeff and Meg’s LA home, that had always made Mike a little on edge, comfortable because Jeff’s home is a familiar space to him, but not quite comfortable because it was clearly not all Jeff’s.

This isn’t even not all Jeff’s. This is just—a house.

It makes Mike grit his teeth. This isn’t a home. Not like Jeff’s always wanted. Not like he has, back at the lake.

But it’s where Jeff is now, so Mike’s going to stick around.

It’s not as bad as Mike had made it up to be, really. Mike eats the dinner Jeff makes, a ridiculously LA dinner of some kale salad thing and lean meats, and meets Emersyn’s glares with his most stubborn glare back. Apparently their truce ended when Jeff came back to LA. Caden rattles on about his game, unaware, but Jeff definitely notices. He lets Emersyn lean into him, and she gives Mike a smug look like that’s a win for her, but Jeff meets Mike’s eyes with something that at least isn’t anger in them, so Mike thinks maybe that’s a win for him.

Caden tries to talk Mike into a game of mini sticks after dinner, but Mike’s already saying no as Jeff tells Caden,

“Richie’s tired, give him a day.” Their eyes meet. Jeff blinks, that same almost-surprised look. What, did he think he’d forgotten everything he knows about Mike in the time he’d been gone?

“Your dad’s right,” Mike says, with a pointed look at Jeff. “Some other time.”

“Fine.” Caden sighs, like that’s the end of the world. It’s the sort of sigh Mike’s heard Jeff make more than once, when he was being passive-aggressive; it makes Mike snort. Caden’s face goes even more betrayed at that.

“Sure, later,” Mike tells him, before Mike can see if he sulks as well as his dad and sister.

Caden sighs again, but he’s easily distracted by some video game Emersyn’s playing, and leaves Jeff and Mike alone in the kitchen.

“I really am going to crash,” Mike tells Jeff. He’d forgotten how draining travelling can be, now that he’s not on a plane every other day.

Jeff nods. “Need anything?” There’s nothing in Jeff’s face that makes it look like he’s expecting an answer of anything other than toothpaste or some shit like that, but that puts Mike’s back up. He’s spent a long fucking time with no one expecting shit of him. Jeff’s not supposed to be one of those people. 

So Mike—lets himself look, in the way he never really has before, lingers on Jeff’s lips and shoulders and legs, kicked out lazy in front of him in his jeans. When he pulls his gaze back up to Jeff’s face, he’s a little flushed, and he’s got the look in his eyes that Mike’s seen a thousand times, where he knows someone’s been looking at him and likes what they see, but he doesn’t look entirely happy about it.

“Don’t know if what I need’s on offer,” Mike says, and Jeff’s face does that thing again.

“Richie…”

“Didn’t think so.” Mike gets up from the table. “See you in the morning, Carts.”

“Sure.” Jeff sounds reluctant. But Mike’s also pretty sure he watches Mike as he leaves.

* * *

Mike wakes up in the morning to dim sun on his face. It takes him a second to remember where he is, why he’s so disconcerted, then it registers. LA. Jeff. Right.

The house is quiet when he gets out of bed. It takes him another second, then, right, time zones. Not even Jeff’s morning person can compete with jet lag, and apparently the kids aren’t up this early either.

It makes it all feel—off, though, walking through Jeff’s empty house, in the early morning light, seeing the beach outside, the ocean. New and old all mixed together. If Mike squints, he can almost see Arnold as a younger dog, running across the beach; chasing after a ball Mike threw. Waking up to get on a plane, Jeff dragging Mike out of bed with the promise of coffee and his way of ignoring all of Mike’s swearing.

Jeff on the first morning he got to LA, how Mike had found him on the beach, looking out at the ocean, looking for all the world like he belonged there in California already, and how he’d turned when he saw Mike and smiled, bright as the sun, and Mike had felt—voracious with it, to have Jeff’s smile here with him again, that God and the NHL and fucking Gary Bettman himself couldn’t take Jeff away from him, that this wouldn’t be Columbus and Jeff would love it here and want to stay if Mike had to kill someone to make it happen. He hadn’t been able to say that, though, so instead he’d walked over and knocked their shoulders together, said some shit about Jeff calming down, the beach would be there tomorrow.

Now Mike’s bones ache a little, and Arnold’s far away, and Jeff’s still asleep and pissed at Mike, but the ocean’s still there, like it had been almost fifteen years ago.

Mike turns away, and heads back inside. Jeff must have a gym here.

He finds the gym, and is just finishing up some reps when he hears the door open.

He finishes, sets the weights down, then looks over. Jeff’s leaning against the door, his arms crossed, but he’s looking at Mike again, with the look that Mike recognizes now, but also something that’s insultingly like surprise.

“What?” Mike snaps.

“You’re still here,” Jeff retorts.

“Told you I would be.” Mike stretches, mainly to see if Jeff looks. “You thought I wouldn’t?”

Jeff shrugs. “Wasn’t sure.” Mike glares, because Jeff shouldn’t be an idiot, even if he’s sulking. Before Mike can point that out, though, Jeff goes on. “Kids and I are going to the zoo today.”

Mike can speak Jeff well enough for that. “Just let me shower.”

“You don’t have to come,” Jeff says. Pointed. “If it’ll be too bright, or too loud, or—”

“Half an hour,” Mike cuts him off. It’ll be bright and loud and Mike kind of doesn’t get the point of zoos, but he’s fucking coming.

“If you want to,” Jeff says, like it’s a concession. “It’ll take longer than that to get the kids ready.”

So Jeff’s still sulking. Mike’s okay with that. He knows how to handle Jeff in a sulk. Especially when,

“He’s coming?” Emersyn demands, glaring at Mike.

“Yes,” Mike says, before Jeff can say anything.

“Awesome!” Caden jumps in. “The zoo’s awesome. Have you ever been to the zoo?”

“Not since I was your age,” Mike replies. He has to divert from the driver’s side of his car to the passenger side of Jeff’s. Jeff’s lips twitch.

“Dude, you missed out! The zoo’s so cool, dad takes us all the time.” Caden starts telling them about the zoo and what Mike has to look forward to, and Emersyn starts to argue, mostly, from what Mike can tell, to prove that Mike should go home—possibly to Jeff’s house, but more likely to Canada. Mike half listens, but he spends most of the time being irritated at LA drivers. It’s a fucking Sunday and there’s still way too much traffic.

He mutters that to himself, then catches Jeff rolling his eyes at him. He keeps going anyway.

Mike grabs a hat and his sunglasses before he gets out of the car. Jeff grabs his sunglasses too, but they don’t do much to disguise him. Mike guesses it’s been enough time, and LA’s LA enough that no one will recognize him. He just looks like any good looking LA guy, anyway, like he always had. Well, maybe fewer real teeth, but he slid into this city like it was made for him and he still does, as he mostly ignores Mike and plans with his kids their route around the zoo.

It’s fun, Mike guesses. It’s a good zoo, and he really hadn’t been to a zoo in ages so it’s kind of new. It is definitely not new to Caden, who has decided it’s his personal job to escort Mike around. It’s not like it’s hard, to listen to the kid’s chatter, and it’s definitely better than Emersyn, who watches him suspiciously the whole time like she thinks he’s going to stab Jeff if she looks away.

It’s almost better than looking at Carts, too. Who is always pointedly not looking at Mike when Mike looks over, but Mike knows Jeff’s look when he looks away too fast. It’s better than nothing, he figures, and lets Caden tow him over to see the lions.

It’s all fine until lunch, when they go to the food court and suddenly it’s a lot of kids in a small area, all clamoring for lunch and sugar. Emersyn and Caden start right up with it, begging for cotton candy like they know Jeff’s going to give in because he’s a soft touch. The California sun is bright and the kids’ voices are high and maybe Mike hasn’t been drinking enough water because he can feel the pounding in his head start up.

He grits his teeth. It’s just a headache. It’s whatever. He’s proving to Jeff that he can do LA, that this is fine, and—

Jeff looks over at him over his kids’ heads, like he knows exactly what Mike’s thinking, and something flicks over his face. Mike lets out a breath.

“I’m gonna go somewhere for a second,” he tells Jeff, gesturing to his head like Jeff wouldn’t get it. Something else goes across Jeff’s face, still too fast. “Text me when you move.”

“Okay,” Jeff replies shortly, but his gaze is just a bit worried as it flicks over Mike.

That worried look is still on his face, when Mike rejoins them after lunch. The kids have the remnants of cotton candy on their faces, of course.

“I’m good,” Mike tells him. “Just needed a second.”

Jeff snorts, though the look in his eyes fades. “Like you’d say anything else.”

“I took the second,” Mike points out, feeling sharp. He gets Jeff’s pissed and whatever, he gets to be, but Mike’s trying, here.

Jeff snorts again, and turns away. “Polar bear time?” he asks the kids, who agree. Loudly.

So they see the polar bears, and apparently the entire rest of the place, and then they go back to Jeff’s, where the kids have to repeat everything they saw, in case Jeff missed any of it. It’s kind of cute, really, how Jeff listens and nods at every different monkey fact Caden tells him, even though Jeff had read most of them off the same signs Caden had. Even if Jeff doesn’t say another word to Mike that he doesn’t have to.

Later that night, he has to—Jeff’s been doing some work in the living room, and Mike had sat himself down on the chair across from him with his laptop with a glare like he was daring Jeff to kick him out. Jeff wasn’t going to kick him out, he knew. Jeff was going to huff and pout and make it obvious he was very aware Mike was there, but kicking him out wasn’t Jeff’s style.

So they sit there and Jeff works and Mike messes around online, and then Jeff makes a louder noise than usual, and Mike looks up. “You okay?”

Jeff shoots him a look like how dare he ask. Mike waits.

“Babysitter cancelled,” Jeff says at last. “Meg’s picking up the kids tomorrow afternoon, but I’ve got work. Got to find someone for the morning.”

“I haven’t got anything to do.”

Jeff’s eyes widen. “Rich.”

“Carts,” Mike retorts, a little sharper. “Unless you don’t even trust me with your kids.”

“Don’t be a dick,” Jeff snaps back. “Just wasn’t sure how long you’re staying.”

“You know how long I’m here.” Mike meets Jeff’s eyes, so Jeff gets it. He’s here. He’s in it.

Jeff’s face twists. “I know how long you say you’re here,” he says, then, “Fine, you can watch the kids,” like it’s a concession. “Meg’ll be here around 2ish. I’ll leave the numbers and shit. Don’t let my kids die.”

“I raised you, I think I can—”

“Fuck off,” Jeff snaps, and that’s—Mike didn’t expect that. They’ve always made those jokes. He’d never known Jeff to react like this about them.

Jeff stands up, abruptly. “I’m going to—”

“Carts.” Mike stands up too. He can’t stop Jeff going anywhere, but he’s not going to just let that go. He doesn’t want to push Jeff’s button’s on accident. Communication, and all that.

“What?” Jeff’s mouth is set in that sulky line again.

“Jeff,” Mike says, again, and Jeff scowls, then makes a face like he’s decided something.

“You didn’t fucking raise me,” he throws at Mike. “We were _friends_.”

There’s a lot to unpack there, but, “Were?”

“Fuck you, that’s not—are, whatever.” Jeff shoves a hand into his hair. “I’m going to—”

“No, what do you mean?” Mike demands, and steps to the right. It’s not enough to actually block Jeff’s exit, but it’s enough to make a statement. Jeff’s not getting away that easily.

For a second, Jeff just glares. Then, reluctant, “You don’t get to make it all about me needing you,” he bites out, and then he really does push past Mike, upstairs.

Mike considers going after him, not letting him run away from this too. But the kids are asleep upstairs, and he doesn’t—that was never what the joke was.

* * *

There’s a note on the table when Mike wakes up, with emergency numbers in Jeff’s scrawl. So at least Jeff still trusts Mike to deal with his kids.

And he does, because he’s not that much of an asshole, and it’s fine. He and Caden work on his shot a little. Emersyn sulks around, but she comes out for lunch, and even deigns to tell Mike that his sandwiches are kind of okay. She clearly saw Jeff this morning being mad at Mike, because she says it a little triumphantly, like she’ll concede this because she’s winning.

They’re out by the beach when Meg comes in, through the house because of course she has a key.

Jeff clearly warned her Mike would be there, because she doesn’t look surprised. She doesn’t look happy, but she’s not grabbing her kids away from some stranger, either.

“Hi mom!” Caden yells, from where he and Emersyn were playing in the surf. Emersyn waves, smiling bigger than she has all morning.

Mike turns. She looks—older than when he’d last seen her, because he’d last seen her ten years ago. She’s aged well, in the careful way of someone who took a lot of care with how she aged. She’s still hot. Mike wouldn’t expect anything else of Jeff’s wife. Ex-wife.

“Mike,” she says, even.

“Meg,” he replies, as even.

“Mom!” Caden yells, scrambling up the sand. “Mom, we went to the zoo!”

“I never would have guessed,” she says, smiling a little. “Go get your stuff, okay? You too, Em.”

The kids nod and run off. Meg looks at Mike. Mike looks back.

“Jeff said he’d texted you everything,” Mike says at last. “You can tell him the kids were alive when I handed them off.”

“Yeah.” She nods, turns to walk back up to the house—then she stops, and turns around again. “No, you know what? You need to get your shit together.”

“What?” Mike snaps. Meg’s always been—feisty, Doughty had called her once—but she’s never come at Mike like that.

“You need to get your shit together,” she repeats. “Because he doesn’t deserve this.”

“What do you think I’m doing?” Mike retorts. “I’m here.”

“Sure, for now.” She waves a hand dismissively. Mike grits his teeth. He knows he shouldn’t start shit with the mother of Jeff’s kids, but he’s not going to let anyone walk over him, either. Mike’s never known how to do anything but fight back. “But—Jeff’s not going to say this, so I will.”

Mike snorts. “Carts has said plenty. Or not said. For a while.” 

“No, he won’t. Not to you. He’s going to forgive you, because he always forgives _you_, even when you’re being awful to him, and—” Meg takes a breath. Bites at her lip. When she speaks again, her voice is less high-pitched. “I never said anything, because Jeff loves you, but if you’re actually finally making a move, it’s—I’ve got to.”

“Then say it,” Mike spits. The sun’s bright on the beach, the sort of bright it never gets in the north—the sort that Mike can feel burning even through his sunscreen.

“Okay. You can’t treat him like you do. He needs more than that.”

“What do you know about what Carts needs?” Mike sneers.

She rolls her eyes. “I was married to him for eleven years. I know it’s not as long as you’ve known him, but I didn’t leave him for ten of them, either.”

“You’re just leaving him now.” Mike glares. He—she doesn’t fucking get to tell him how to treat Jeff. He’s the one who let her have Jeff, who knows Jeff, she’s the one who divorced him—

“That doesn’t mean I don’t know him. Or that I don’t know what mistakes you can make.” She takes a breath. “We both know you love him. That you’ve loved him, for a long time. But that doesn’t mean your relationship’s been equal.”

Doesn’t Mike fucking know it. That’s always been the truth of them, the thing it took him long, painful years to unlearn. That Jeff had other people, and that was healthy; that Mike’s vicious need for all of him wasn’t good. That just because he couldn’t have all of Jeff, it didn’t mean he wasn’t enough.

“You’ve left him what, twice now?” Meg goes on, and Mike blinks. That’s not how he’d have phrased that. “Three times, if you count after the Philly trade. And yeah, Jeff’s said, it’s more complicated, he made all your excuses like he always does, but it devastated him each time.”

“So now you care about people leaving him?” Mike snaps back, to say something. “You were his wife. You were supposed to always be there for him, to be his rock, that’s why I—”

“But you were already there, weren’t you?” Meg cuts him off. She’s blazing bright now, like the sun, and for a second—well, maybe Mike can see what Jeff saw in her, even through his anger. “You wanted him to keep relying on you. To keep needing you, all the time, even when you didn’t even want him.”

Like there’s ever been a time Mike didn’t want Jeff. Maybe there was, years and years ago, before the first time Jeff smiled at him, before Jeff first looked at him like wherever Mike would go, he’d follow, before Mike had first snapped at Jeff and Jeff had ignored him and gotten his own way anyway. But Mike doesn’t really remember that time.

“You don’t know anything about what I want,” Mike tells her. She doesn’t know anything about them. So she was married to Jeff, for a long time. That doesn’t mean she knows him better than Jeff. Doesn’t mean she knows them. She wasn’t even there, for most of it.

“That’s not—” she takes a breath, then, from the house, there’s a crash.

She tugs a bit at her ponytail, shakes her head. “I should deal with that.”

Mike grunts. But—he follows her in too.

It’s not a catastrophe; Emersyn just knocked over a table full of dishes and is close to tears because of it, standing in the middle of the broken pottery.

“Oh, hey, baby, it’s okay,” Meg says immediately. “Here, let’s get some shoes, and—”

“I’ve got her,” Mike says, because he’s good for this at least still, and steps across. Emersyn’s too shaken up to be mad, she looks up at him with big blue eyes. “You’ve got to jump, okay, kid?” he says. She glances at her mom, then nods. Mike boosts her up, then whisks her over the shards of pottery to a safe space. It’s harder than Mike expected—she must be dense—but he can still do it.

“Thanks,” Meg tells him, like she didn’t think about it, then, “Go get a broom, okay, Em? But don’t come close.”

Emersyn nods, and runs off. Meg looks over at Mike. She looks serious again.

“It’s not that I don’t—I’m not against you two,” she says. Mike remembers her looking like this the first time they’d talked, when Jeff had brought her over. He’d gotten up to go get them more drinks, or something, and Meg had looked at Mike, and she’d been this serious too, when she’d told him how much she liked Jeff, when she laughed off all Mike’s pointed comments about his money. Then Jeff had come back in, and seen the two of them talking, and he’d smiled, like this was exactly what he wanted, and that hadn’t—Mike had still wanted to scare her away, to tell Jeff she was awful just to see that he’d dump her for that, but Jeff had smiled and so he hadn’t. Not when after, Jeff had asked him what he thought, eager and a little nervous. Not even months later when Jeff had told Mike, blushing and offhand in the way that meant it was important, that he was going to ask her to marry him.

Meg shakes her head again. “I’m not, actually. I mean, it’s…disconcerting, but—no one loves Jeff like you do.” Her lips twist. “No one’s loved him longer, anyway. But I want him to be happy, really, and you can’t do that if it stays unequal.”

Mike narrows his eyes at her. “I’m going to make him happy,” he says, and it’s—it’s not a vow like she made, at an altar, but it’s what he can give. His determination to do just that.

She doesn’t look convinced. “As long as it’s not just on your terms,” she says, and then, “Thanks, honey,” when Emersyn comes back in, and then it’s a hassle of them getting packed up and leaving until Mike’s all alone in Jeff’s house.

He glares at the door, after they’ve left. It’s very quiet, so he can’t drown out the thoughts. But—what does Meg know? Since when have he and Jeff been on Mike’s terms? Mike’s terms used to be just—whatever Jeff wanted. Whatever would keep Jeff with him. Now they’re more complicated, and that’s a good thing. Or at least, according to Dr. Farella.

He just needs Jeff to know that, again.

* * *

With the kids gone, it becomes a lot clearer how pissy Jeff is. He doesn’t not speak to Mike, or not about the important shit about life, but there are a lot of glares and huffed breaths and pointedly avoiding him.

Mike knows how to deal with all that. He’s dealt with Jeff’s moods before, dealt with Jeff being mad at him before, even if it’s never been this mad, and so he pushes through it. Jeff gets over his moods with enough time and ignoring that he’s in a mood.

So Mike does what he meant to do, and sets out to prove to Jeff that he can do LA. That Jeff’s not forcing him into anything. That he’s going to be here, for the long haul. He goes for walks on the beach, he finds a new coffee place, he even googles some shit about workshops in LA that makes him close his computer immediately because it talks about ‘shared workspaces’ and ‘collaborative experiences’ and makes Mike gag. Maybe Jeff has a basement or would be okay with a shed.

But it’s okay. He’s doing okay. LA is—it is bright, and loud, and Mike sort of hates a lot about it, but he’d forgotten how good take out could be and the beach is, admittedly, pretty nice. Mike doesn’t have the urge, really, to go out or anything, to go do something self-destructive. Maybe it’s there, a tug sometimes, when he’s been inside too long, but it’s not—LA, without the baggage, Mike finds, isn’t the worst.

He says that, once, loudly, in the kitchen as Jeff’s cooking and he’s watching after Jeff ordered him to stop trying to help. He’d seen Jeff’s shoulders tense, seen him glance at Mike, and the quick flash of something Mike wanted to call hope in that look.

“I’m sure it needs your approval,” is all Jeff mutters, though, and goes back to chopping peppers.

He sees that more, though. After. Around. Jeff looking at Mike, and part of it is the way he had up by the lake, like he liked what he saw, but part of it is—something else. Something wary. Something wanting. Something that Mike thinks he last saw the first few weeks he was in LA after Columbus. It comes up when Mike edges him out of the way to do dishes. When he tells Jeff his guest room pillows are shitty so they’re going to get him better ones. When Jeff gets back from a run and strips his sweaty shirt off and Mike doesn’t pretend like he isn’t watching.

But it’s other times too, times Mike doesn’t quite understand. When Mike texts Jeff that he’s having a bad day and can’t quite make it out of bed and he better bring him up some of the soup he made yesterday. When he decides he’s tagging along on one of Jeff’s runs, which was definitely a mistake because Jeff’s both used to running and has those stupidly long legs. When, weirdly, Mike says that he can’t go to Caden’s hockey game. When he talks, tentatively, about where a shed could go in the yard.

Mike can’t quite see the shape of it—what those things have in common. That, more than anything, is what eats at him. He’s supposed to know Jeff. No matter what else they had, Mike _knew _Jeff, knew him to his bones and back, and Jeff—Jeff knew Mike, too, or Mike had to believe he did. That the Mike Jeff knew was the one Mike was.

* * *

Mike’s sitting on the couch when his phone buzzes. It makes him jump, and then glare at Jeff, who chuckles from the other end of the couch. No one ever texts him. His mom and brothers check in occasionally, but—he’s not exactly someone who texts.

“Fuck off,” he tells Jeff, then looks at his phone.

“Popular, Rich?” Jeff sneers, and Mike bares his teeth at him. But it’s still—better. Jeff’ s reacting, at least.

Then he looks at his phone, and that’s almost more surprising.

“Win the lottery?”

“What, to buy you a bigger mansion on the beach?” Mike retorts, then, “No, it’s just Doughty.”

Jeff doesn’t look as surprised as Mike does. But then again, they probably talk more than Mike does. “What’s he want?”

Mike ignores that to look. _You didn’t say you’d be in LA _He’s texted, and then a link. Mike clicks on it—it’s a tweet, from some random account that Mike doesn’t know how Drew found, but it’s a picture of him and Jeff at the zoo, Mike’s hand in Caden’s collar and Jeff scoffing at both of them. The text says ‘they’re still friends omg!’

_Why do you think I wanted Carts’ address? _Mike replies.

_I don’t ask about you and Carts. _Mike rolls his eyes. _But you’re here! We should hang out. _

“Drew wants to get together,” Mike reports. 

_We can go out! It’ll be like old times. _Drew follows it up with.

“He wants to go out,” Mike says aloud. Jeff hums, but he looks at Mike in a way that makes Mike aware that Jeff has Thoughts about that. Or that he’s waiting, to see what Mike will do.

Mike’s not going to be an idiot. He does know his limits. He’s not going to go to a bar. Alcohol might not be a trigger, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to be careless.

But—he pokes at the feeling, of Doughty, of these remnants of his past. It hurts, still. But he remembers the good times too, of coming to LA and being torn in two but this team taking him in. Of winning, and winning, and crying into each other’s shoulders in a locker room. Of—even of not winning, of when Mike had gotten sent down and he’d told Drew they were going out drinking, and Drew hadn’t hesitated before he went.

“He can take me out to eat,” Mike decides. “I come all the way down from Ontario, he can spring for food.”

Jeff snorts. “Don’t let him take you to the place in Koreatown,” he warns. A little reluctantly, like he’s mad at himself for saying it, but he says it. “He loves it but it’s the most commercialized shit you’ll ever find.”

“Tell him that yourself,” Mike says. “I’m making a thread. I don’t remember where’s good anymore.”

“You can Yelp it yourself,” Jeff retorts. “You do remember how to do that, right?”

“And if I choose somewhere you don’t like, you’ll just bitch about it for the next week.” Mike remembers that well enough, even if they’d never gone out to eat by the lake. Jeff’s easygoingness had some big holes in it. Especially when it was Mike, who noticed him being bitchy. “Where do you want to go?” 

He’s only half-watching Jeff, half-looking at his phone to start said text chain, but he still sees Jeff’s face when Mike says that—it’s not surprise, exactly, but it’s definitely good. “I’ll talk to Dewey about it,” is all Jeff says, though.

They end up getting dinner at some Mexican place in Santa Monica, the sort of place that Mike guesses is okay for Jeff to come with his kids but also isn’t too much for four adults. It’s also just good; Mike had almost forgotten what real Mexican tasted like.

And it’s nice to catch up with Drew, and with Brownie, who Jeff apparently roped into coming. Despite the fact that Mike’s last interaction with Dustin was him refusing to give Jeff’s address and reading him the riot act. There’s a lot of catching up to do, on their end at least, and showing of pictures of kids, that Mike makes the appropriate noises about even as he catches Jeff’s eyes, sees Jeff’s face snap away from smiling at what he must know is Mike not really caring. It’s not that the kids aren’t cute, he’s just never really gotten the whole thing.

“She’s gotten it into her head she’s going to be a goalie,” Dustin says of his daughter, when he gets to a picture of her with goalie’s pads on. “I can’t convince her otherwise.”

“She does get what being a goalie means, right?” Drew asks. Dustin nods, emphatic.

“Goalies’ crazy’s just in them,” Jeff says, shrugging. “You let Quickie hold her too much.”

“Or spend too much time with your wife,” Mike adds, and chuckles as Dustin rolls his eyes at him. It gets Jeff to laugh, though—almost like he’s forgiving Mike. “Or just get her playing with Caden,” Mike adds. “Kid’s got a slapshot. That’d scare anyone sane.”

“She says it’s exciting,” Dustin says on a sigh, but Drew snorts.

“You coaching him, then? It’s not fair the kid gets two NHL dads for the price of one.”

Jeff’s face goes red. Mike’s doesn’t, because he can actually keep things to himself, but he does look at Jeff, to see his reaction.

“With this one’s genes, I think he can’t help but score goals,” Mike replies, nudging Jeff. Jeff snorts, but he gives Mike the pleased look.

Drew rolls his eyes, though. “You would say that. You just want to raise a new generation of NHL assholes, eh?”

“Hey, he’s the one who adopts people, not me.” Mike gestures at Jeff. “I just—”

“Adopt whoever he’s taken on?” Drew finishes.

Drew’s looking at him like it’s obvious, Dustin like he’s amused at something, and Jeff like—like he’s not sure what he thinks about what Mike’s saying, and Mike’s done with this conversation.

“Whatever, man. You wish you had kids as cool as Carts’.”

“Even the one who hates you?” Jeff puts in, but his lips are twitching.

Mike scoffs. “Emersyn doesn’t hate me. We have an understanding.”

Jeff makes a very skeptical face. Mike stares him down. They do have an understanding. It’s wobbled lately, given Mike’s…hiccup at keeping up his end of the ‘keeping Jeff happy’ deal, but the understanding’s still there. They both get what’s important.

“What did you do to Em?” Dustin asks. Mike swallows down the immediate irritation at the nickname. Brownie’s known Emersyn a lot longer than Mike, technically. It makes sense. Mike’s relationship with Emersyn, in particular, isn’t unique.

“He existed,” Jeff replies. Mike rolls his eyes. Jeff smirks at him, not very nicely. He’s leaning back in the booth, his ridiculously long arms stretched across the back so they almost reach behind Mike, and he looks like every asshole LA guy, except for how he’s _Mike’s _asshole LA guy, and it irritatingly makes Mike want to drag him down and kiss that smirk from his lips. To make him remember just what he gets from Mike existing.

Jeff’s eyes widen, like he sees all that in Mike’s face, and that smile twitches over his face again, that look like he’s not displeased with how Mike’s looking at him.

“Ah yes. I often hate Richie just for existing,” Dustin agrees, and Mike blinks, and looks back at Brownie. Brownie’s eyebrows are raised, just a little.

Luckily, Drew seems to have noticed nothing, so he asks about what Mike’s been doing other than fishing at the lake, and Jeff brings up the woodworking because he was never not going to be a dick about it, and they get distracted. Until,

“How do we even pay here, Carts?” Dustin asks, when they’ve been sitting around done for a while. When Jeff says they have to go up front, Drew groans like it’s the worst thing in the world.

“Fine, I’ve got it,” Jeff says, rolling his eyes. Mike narrows his eyes.

“Drew’s paying for me,” he states. That was the deal, and Drew’s not putting that on Jeff.

“Yeah, whatever.” Drew waves a hand. “I’ll Venmo you, Carts, just—go do your thing and get us a discount, or whatever.”

Jeff snorts, but he gets up.

“You are Venmoing him,” Mike says, again. He knows Jeff and how he won’t press on shit like that.

“Okay, fine. It’s not going to bankrupt him.”

“It’s not going to bankrupt you either,” Mike retorts. He can’t help but watch Jeff, as he takes up a post near the hostess stand, clearly waiting. There’s a man there, a short guy with gym-honed muscles and a quick, appreciative look for the long up and down of Jeff. He says something to Jeff, and Jeff’s smile comes out, the long slow drag of it.

Mike’s fists clench. So he hasn’t gotten that smile from Jeff in weeks. Jeff’s pissed at him. That’ll pass. And it doesn’t mean—Jeff flirting with some man doesn’t mean that he’s leaving, Mike tells himself. Hell, Jeff smiling at some man doesn’t even mean he’s flirting. Mike’ll—Mike’ll prove to Jeff that he’s what Jeff needs, that he can give Jeff what he needs, and then—Mike trusts Jeff. He takes a breath, repeats that. He does. That’s a bedrock he can build on.

“Think Carts is getting back in the game?” Drew asks, following Mike’s gaze. He doesn’t look like he’s going to be shitty about it. “He needs a good rebound, get him over the divorce.”

“No he doesn’t,” Mike says. Maybe growls. Jeff doesn’t need a _rebound_.

“Woah, okay.” Drew holds up his hands. Mike takes a breath.

“Carts should do whatever he wants,” Mike says. Tries to believe it. No, he does believe it. But what he wants should be Mike.

“As long as you approve?” Mike snorts. Drew grins. “That’s what I thought. Just like old times.”

“Fuck off,” Mike tells him. He glances at Jeff again.

“It’s not, though,” Drew goes on. “You’re different.”

“No kidding.”

“Nah, not like—” Drew waves a hand, encompassing, apparently, all of Mike’s shit in that waved hand. “Like, normally Carts was the one following you around.”

“What’s that mean?” Mike demands. It’s the sort of thing they’d gotten all the time, but after Jeff snapping at him, that he didn’t raise Jeff, Mike doesn’t want to let it lie. 

“I think what Drew’s trying, badly, to say,” Dustin cuts in, “Is that we’ve never seen you like this.”

“Yeah!” Drew agrees emphatically. “You’ve always been, um, intense about Carts, no duh, but not like, this sort of intense.” Mike raises an eyebrow. Sure, he’s less intense about Carts now, maybe, because he’s not as fucked up in a million other ways, but somehow he gets the feeling that’s not what they’re talking about. And the guy is still fucking smiling at Jeff, and Jeff says something to make him laugh. How long does it take for a hostess to get back to the stand? “Like you’re the one that’s gonna break if he’s gone, not the other way around.”

Drew’s such an idiot, Mike thinks. That’s the only explanation. “Go pay for our food,” he scoffs. “You’ll never actually Venmo him.”

Drew grumbles, but gets up. When he gets across the room, Jeff glances over his shoulder, at Mike. Mike tries to grimace, like it wasn’t obvious what he was doing, but Jeff’s lips twitch anyway. It settles something in Mike, even if he doesn’t want it to. Jeff looking back at him.

“So what happened?” Dustin asks. Mike turns to him, away from Jeff. It’s easier, now that he knows Drew’s distracted Jeff. “With you and Carts.”

“Why do you think something happened?”

“Because Dewey’s an idiot, but he’s not wrong.” Brownie’s looking at him with his too-knowing Captain’s look on. Mike knows that look. Mike remembers wearing that look, a lifetime ago.

“I thought you think I’m going to hurt him again if I came to LA,” Mike retorts. He’s not, generally, against people defending Jeff, but when it’s against him—and by people who were his friends too—well. He’d gotten pissed, when he had a chance to think about it instead of going on to the next person who might have Jeff’s address.

“So you didn’t, then? There’s another reason he refused to talk about you after he got back?”

“What do you want to hear?” Mike snaps. “I fucked up. I’m trying to fix it, so he’ll give us another chance.”

“Us?”

Fuck. Mike hadn’t meant to say that, particularly. But Dustin’s looking at him with that calm expression like he’s waiting for Mike to back down from it, like he’s expecting the worst from Mike, and for once Mike doesn’t want to do that. “Us,” Mike confirms. “Figured that after twenty years, I might as well try.”

That at least gets a look of shock out of Dustin. “Twenty years?” he asks.

Mike sets his jaw. He knows exactly how obvious he was. “Don’t sound so shocked.”

“I sort of am, though.” Dustin glances over at Jeff, where they’re finally paying. “I’d have put money on the other way around.”

It chokes in Mike’s throat. “Then you’re an idiot too. Jeff always had his hot girls.”

“Sure, but.” Dustin shakes his head. “You were, what did Drew say, intense about him, yeah. But he’s not wrong that Carts was your shadow, not the other way.”

“Then you guys weren’t looking,” Mike says, short. No one who was looking would think that—sure, Jeff had a fuck ton more emotions than Mike, because he had more emotions than anyone, but Mike was the one who couldn’t handle Jeff getting married. Who couldn’t handle sleeping with Jeff. Who couldn’t handle—any of it.

“If you say so,” Dustin says, but he sounds skeptical. “You didn’t see him when you ghosted him, though. Either time.”

“I—”

“I’m just saying, I’m standing by what I said, okay?” Dustin goes on, and there’s the intensity too, that he brought to the game when he needed to. “The only other person I’ve seen hurt him like you do is Meg.”

Mike opens his mouth to retort, but— “Come on, we should totally do it,” Drew says, dropping back into the seat next to Dustin. He turns to Dustin. “Big playdate, all the kids.”

“Only if we do it at your house, because I’m not cleaning that up,” Dustin retorts. Jeff looks at Mike, his eyebrows raised, a question in it. Mike shrugs. He’s not telling Jeff Dustin just gave him the shovel talk, again. It’s not like it matters, anyway. Mike’s not afraid of Dustin. The rest of it, sure, but not Dustin Brown.

* * *

Still, Mike chews it over, as they drive home. Meg was one thing. Meg didn’t know him, didn’t really know them. But Brownie, Dewey—they’d seen Mike and Jeff together for years. How couldn’t they have seen, how desperate Mike had been all the time?

Mike can feel Jeff watching him too, as they drive—the question Jeff’s not going to ask, but Jeff knows Mike well enough to know that something’s up.

And—Jeff’s not going to ask. But. Mike needs to do this sort of shit, now. Communicate. Take that, he tells Dr. Farella, and lets out a long breath. “Brownie gave me the shovel talk,” he says, and feels rather than hears Jeff react.

It takes a second, anyway, for the, “Yeah?” to get out of Jeff’s mouth. Which is really helpful.

Mike doesn’t know what else he’s supposed to say to that. “Yeah.” He pauses, then, “I didn’t mean to say anything about—us—it just sort of came out.” Jeff shrugs, his eyes still on the road. “Figured. You weren’t being subtle, with that guy.”

“Seriously, Rich?”

Mike huffs again. Jeff’s hands move on the steering wheel.

“Are you okay?” he asks, and Mike hates him a little for it. That Jeff can ask that. “I know last time—”

“It was better,” Mike admits. “I would be freaking out again, if it wasn’t.”

Jeff hums. It sounds expectant. “It helps. Knowing that you know.” Fuck, Mike hates this. “That this isn’t you leaving me behind.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because it’s you.” Mike had known that, years ago, but it’s clearer now, with the rest of the shit around it quieted. That gets a bit of a smile, as they pull into the driveway, and Jeff puts the car into park. “And I see how you look at me now, so—”

The smile drops. Jeff yanks the door open, and Mike is sick of this.

“What?” he demands, getting out the other side too, before Jeff can run away. “Am I supposed to pretend you aren’t into me? Is that what’ll get you to forgive me?”

Jeff turns. “It’s not about supposed to!” he retorts. “I’m not trying to make you do anything.”

“Well you’re mad at me if I don’t, so—”

“If you’re only actually talking to me about shit because you think I’ll be mad if you don’t, that’s not the point!” Jeff throws his hands in the air.

“Then what is the point?” Mike demands. He’s been _trying_, for weeks now, and he gets that Jeff doesn’t have to forgive him or anything but he wants to know how he can fix it. He was an athlete, once; he can work at shit if he knows where the goalposts are. “Is it just to be mad at me until you’re done? I get it, I fucked up, kicking you out was fucked up, I—”

“It’s not about that!”

“Then what is it about?”

“It was so easy for you to do it!” Mike snorts. Easy, sure. That was only probably the hardest thing he’d ever done, to look at Jeff smiling in his bed and say those words. Worse, now, because he regrets it. Jeff’s face goes dark at that snort, though. “You didn’t even think about it. You definitely didn’t talk to me about it. You just—left. Again.”

“I thought about it enough to overthink it,” Mike retorts, and Jeff makes a low, irritated sound in his throat, so apparently that was the wrong answer too. Mike’s fists clench. He’s not used to this, even a little—he knows Jeff. He’s always known Jeff, known how to give Jeff what he needed, and now he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get what Jeff wants, what Jeff isn’t saying. How to make Jeff happy again. He doesn’t get it, and Jeff won’t just say it, and it’s— “What do you need me to do? What is it that—”

“I don’t need you to _do_ anything! I need you to need me,” Jeff throws at him, and then his face goes red again, and he turns on his heels, striding off towards the back yard.

Mike lets him go. He’d only be able to catch up to him if he ran, which has always irritated him enough that he’s not going to do it. And anyway, he has to deal with what Jeff just said, because—what the fuck. That’s probably the stupidest thing Jeff’s ever said, and Mike’s seen Jeff as a stoned teenager.

Except, as Mike’s anger clears, he thinks—of Meg, who thought their relationship was lopsided on Mike’s side. Of Brownie, who clearly thought the same thing. Jeff couldn’t be stupid enough to think that too, could he? He knew just how fucked Mike had been over him. That it was that level of fucked-ness that had been why Mike had kicked him out in the first place. Mike was trying to be better about that, and if Jeff needed him to be like it had been before…he couldn’t do that.

Mike sighs, and gets up. He knows where Jeff is, because Jeff’s predictable at heart, so he heads down to the beach.

Jeff’s standing there, looking out at the dark ocean. It’s the sort of sight that should be dramatic, but the LA sky’s clouded with smog and light, so it’s not like there are any stars around. Mike misses the stars at the lake. He might not have thought about them much when they were there, but he misses them now.

“Lake’s definitely got star-gazing going for it over LA,” Mike says, as he goes down to stand next to Jeff.

Jeff makes a noise that could almost be a laugh. “How much time do you spend stargazing?” he retorts, and Mike—fuck, he loves him, the overemotional sulky asshole who knows his thoughts as well as he does. He can’t fuck this up. Not again.

“You love LA,” Mike says, and when Jeff makes a sound, he keeps going, “That’s not—I’m not putting words in your mouth, I’ve been friends with you for a long fucking time and I know when you love a place. You did from the beginning.”

Jeff makes a noise like, so?

“And I can’t stay here. I’m—it’s better than I thought it would be, but it’s still…I need to go back. To the lake.”

Jeff rolls his eyes. “I never expected you to move to LA, Rich. I know you better than that.”

“Then what—” Mike shakes his head. It hurts, but—he has to say it. He needs to fix this. “I want to be what you need, Jeff. I just don’t know how.”

“That’s—” Mike doesn’t need any light to hear Jeff’s frustration. “You always do that. Talk about what I need. But I can’t be the only person needing things, not again.”

So Jeff really is that stupid. Mike’s not surprised. “Don’t be an idiot,” Mike tells him. “I’ve always fucking needed you. Way too much.”

“You needed the—like, the concept of me, I don’t know.” Jeff shakes his head. “It’s not the same.”

“Fuck you it’s not,” Mike snaps. “I’ve been in love with you for two decades, I think I know how it works.”

“Fine, whatever, you need me. You need me to exist. You like having me around.” Jeff’s still not looking at Mike. “It’s not like how I am. I’m—Meg called it clingy, you’ve said needy, it’s the same thing.” 

“So?”

“So…” he mutters, to the ocean. “So what we hadn’t wasn’t even. What was it that reporter said? You like me, but I love you.”

“What does a reporter know?” Mike spits. “I lo—”

“You keep on saying you love me and then—I remember being in Ohio, okay? I was the one texting you all the time. Or when you were in Manch. Or—”

“I would have if you hadn’t,” Mike says, and he’s pretty sure he’s telling the truth. “Or—maybe I wouldn’t’ve, because I needed to prove to myself that you would have, but that’s because I was fucked up then. It’s different now.”

Jeff shakes his head. “You—chat, sometimes. I’m the one who has to talk about it, has to know you’re there. I’m still the one always calling you, the one making the move, the one who needs things, who’s bugging you for things, and you’re the one…not. I just—I already had a marriage fall apart because she didn’t need me as much as I needed her, all right? I can’t do that again.”

Fuck. Mike looks at Jeff’s slumped shoulders, and fuck everyone who made him think he doesn’t deserve everything he needs. Including Mike.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Mike tells him. “I asked you to the lake.” 

“For my sake, not yours. And then you just kicked me out.” Jeff’s lips press together. “You say you love me, but it’s—you cut me out of your life like it’s easy. Twice.”

“It was never easy.” Mike retorts. Fuck Jeff, easy.

“Fine, but you still did it. I couldn’t…” Jeff runs a hand through his hair, and Mike wants to—wants to fight whatever it is that makes Jeff think that Mike could let him go again. That he’s too much.

“I’m not going to again.”

“You did.”

“I love you.”

“Do you?” Jeff looks over at Mike, now, and it’s dark but Mike doesn’t need to see his face. Mike knows him, remembers how he looked, when he’s unsure. When Mike needs to be sure for them both. “I get that you say you do, and that you’re doing better, but, I just, fuck, Mike. I can’t be the only one vulnerable here. I can’t be abandoned by you again.”

Mike can be sure. Mike is sure. “I do,” Mike says. Jeff needs to know that? That Mike’s in it this this time, that he’s not twisted up like ten years ago, when everything was fucked, or even like a month ago, when Mike was too lost in the past and what it was to see clearly? That Mike does need Jeff, not in the fucked way but in the way that means Mike’s better, with Jeff there? Mike can do that.

* * *

It takes a week, because Mike needs to talk to some people, and he does take half a second to actually think about it, mainly because his lawyer makes him. But no one has ever accused Mike Richards of being anything other than stubborn, and he is sure of this. He knows what he wants, who he wants, and what he’ll do to get it. What is a sacrifice, and what isn’t.

But in the meantime, he stays at Jeff’s, and he—now that he knows what Jeff needs, he can try. He spent a long time trying not to be obvious, but if Jeff wants him to be obvious, that’s easy enough. He’ll maybe never be touchy, or super into PDA, or whatever, but he gets into Jeff’s space more, doesn’t pretend like he isn’t watching him all the time, gives in to the instinct to demand they hang out, when Jeff comes home from work. It’s not exactly a hardship.

The kids come back, a few days later, Caden excited and Emersyn a little offensively skeptical that he’s still there. Meg’s look is shockingly similar to her daughter’s, but she doesn’t say anything.

Mike waits until she leaves, then herds Jeff out the door for a run. “I need to talk to your kids,” he tells him. Jeff’s eyebrows are way up.

“What does that mean?” Jeff asks, and Mike shakes his head.

“Means that I have to talk to your kids,” Mike repeats, and glares at him until Jeff leaves. At least he doesn’t make a fuss about emergency numbers of whatever this time.

Then he calls the kids back in from where they’d run off, Caden from the backyard and Emersyn from her room.

“What do you want?” Emersyn demands, her lip jutting out. Mike is not looking forward to her being a pissy teenager.

“To talk to you two.” Mainly Emersyn, but he figures Caden should be here too.

“Did you make dad sad again?” Emersyn asks.

Mike rolls his eyes. “No. I’m trying not to. Which is why I want to clear the air with you guys, again.”

“What air?” Caden asks, confused. Emersyn just keeps glaring. 

“Your dad loves you guys,” Mike states. “I’m not trying to mess with that, or take him away, or replace anyone. But your dad should get to be happy too, and I’m going to try to make him, so we need an understanding.”

“Isn’t dad happy?” Caden asks. Emersyn rolls her eyes at her brother.

“What kind of understanding?” Emersyn asks, accusatory. “You _said_ we had one last time, but then you made dad sad anyway.”

Well, she’s not wrong.

“The kind where you get to yell at me when you think I mess up, but you don’t get to be bratty at me when I’m not messing up,” Mike informs her. Emersyn’s lips press together, and her eyes narrow. She’s a smart kid; Mike can almost hear her thinking if she can negotiate for better.

“What if we say no?” she asks. Caden’s still looking between them like he’s very confused.

Mike shrugs. “Then things won’t be very comfortable for us, and I want to be here for a long time, so things won’t be comfortable for a long time.”

That seems like the right answer. It’s kind of nice, to finally have the right answer again with a Carter. “You don’t get to make him miss important things,” she says. “Or ship us off to boarding school.”

Mike snorts. Boarding school, honestly. “Deal. But hockey billets don’t count.”

“Duh,” she scoffs. “And you don’t get to make him mad at mom.”

“Okay.”

“And you’ve got to be nice to him. Not an asshole.”

“I don’t think your dad would like that,” Mike tells her, and watches as Caden’s face twitches when he doesn’t scold her for swearing. “But sure, I’ll try.”

“And we get to sit next to him when we watch scary movies.”

“Okay.”

“And you’ve got to be on our side whenever he wants us to eat gross things,” she adds, with a sly look, and Mike chuckles and shakes his head.

“Don’t push your luck, kid.”

“Fine.” She nods. “We need to consult.”

“Okay.”

She gives him a wary look, then turns and grabs Caden to start whispering to him. He nods a few times, clearly trying to keep up, and the mutters something to her. She rolls her eyes in the way of older siblings everywhere, then mutters something back. Caden nods, and they both turn back to Mike.

“Okay,” Emersyn says, clearly trying to sound very formal. “We accept.”

“Great. It’s a deal.”

“We should shake hands,” she decides, and holds out her hand. Mike takes hers, because she’s not wrong. They shake. She smiles. Mike relaxes, just a little.

When Jeff comes back in, asks what they talked about, Mike shakes his head.

“Important business,” he tells Jeff. “Non-dads only.”

Emersyn giggles to herself, and Caden whispers something, then giggles too. Jeff raises his eyebrows, meets Mike’s eyes in a question. Mike shrugs. He’s not going to tell Jeff he struck a deal with his kids so they’d deal with him.

“Yeah, dad,” Emersyn says, and grabs Jeff’s hand. But she doesn’t glare at Mike, so he’s taking it as a win. “We had business to talk ‘bout with Richie.”

“Oh, business?” Jeff drawls, and jabs a finger into her side to tickle her, which starts a cascade of laughter, and Jeff beaming at her. It’s—yeah. Mike could get used to this, to Jeff laughing with his kids, to him and Emersyn ganging up on Jeff. He wants to get used to it.

He just has to get Jeff there.

* * *

The kids go to sleep, and then Mike finds Jeff, sitting in the living room. The TV’s on, but Jeff doesn’t have a beer, which tells Mike more than anything that he wanted Mike to find him. Or he wasn’t averse to it, or anything.

It’s another good look for Jeff, not that Mike’s found a look for Jeff he doesn’t think is good, even if it’s objectively stupid. But Jeff’s stretched out in his shorts, all long limbs and the line of his neck and that stupid look when he looks up at Mike, raises his eyebrows again.

“Okay?” he asks, before Mike says anything. It’s got the note that Mike knows means Jeff’s not expecting him to actually answer it.

“Here.” Mike takes out the manilla folder his lawyer had just mailed over, drops it into Jeff’s lap.

Jeff gives Mike a very skeptical look, opens the folder, pulls out the papers. His face goes almost comically shocked, and he looks up at Mike, eyes wide and confused.

“What is this, Rich?”

“What does it look like?” Mike retorts. He tries for casual, but this is his biggest play. If this doesn’t work—fuck, it has to work. And the way Jeff’s looking at him means he’s not fooled by Mike’s attempted casualness.

“It looks like you made me co-owner of the lake house.”

“Then I guess it’s what it looks like.”

Jeff looks back down at the paper, then at Mike, then he gets up. “What the fuck, Mike?”

“It’s yours.” Mike says. A statement. It’s terrifying and the easiest thing he’s ever done. “You worry I’m going to leave you again? Well, we both know I’m not leaving the lake, so here. Now I can’t abandon you.”

“Mike…” Jeff starts, but he doesn’t look like he knows where to go.

“I love you.” Mike takes a step closer. “You can doubt a whole fucking lot about me, and that’s—I’ve let you down before, I’ve let a lot of people down. But don’t you dare doubt that I love you, okay? I don’t—I’m not like you, I don’t leak emotions everywhere for everyone to see, I’m shit at being vulnerable, and I don’t see the point in asking for what I need when you know what it is anyway, and I can try but I don’t know if I’ll get better at any of it, but—I love you. And I’m not going anywhere.”

“Mike,” Jeff says again, staring at the deed. He gets it. Mike knew he would, knew he’d understand what Mike meant by this—this is Mike’s heart, laid out for him. More than any rings Jeff has or could put on his finger. “I can’t move to the lake.”

“I don’t want you to.” Jeff winces, and Mike rolls his eyes. “Not like—I know you can’t. I’m not asking you to leave your life behind, or your kids. But—I still have my shit, and I can’t stay here, not forever,” Mike warns. Jeff knows that, but—he needs to put it out there. To let Jeff do what he wants with it. With Mike, and Mike’s stupid heart.

Jeff looks up. His eyes are so fucking bright. “I like the lake,” he says. ““And they’ve got this thing, it’s called a phone.”

“I’m not good at that.” Mike takes a step closer. Jeff waits, still just that hint of wariness.

“As long as you pick up. And tell me when you’re dying.”

Mike presses his lips together, but he takes another step forward. “I can’t promise to be nice about it.”

“No duh.” Jeff doesn’t move, as Mike circles towards him.

“And I’m still probably going to be a jealous asshole. I’ll try to be better, but I don’t know how well it’s going to work.”

Jeff shrugs. He hasn’t looked away from Mike yet, and there’s that look in his eyes, the one that Mike recognizes now. The one that’s his. The one that means he believes Mike. “As long as you trust me.”

“Do you trust me?” Mike asks, and whatever, maybe he holds his breath.

“I do,” Jeff says, simply, and Mike feels it everywhere. Then his lips quirk. “I mean, I don’t have a big romantic gesture, but I can get the kids to make a card, or something—”

“Oh, fuck off,” Mike snaps at him, then grabs the collar of his shirt and tugs him down, kissing his laughter off his face. And people call him the asshole.

Jeff melts into the kiss, like he’d been waiting for it. Like he feels it too, the magic between them snapping into place. Like he wants this too. There’s still so much to work out, but this—this is easy.

Mike pulls back, just enough to look Jeff in his stupid-blue eyes. “I’m going to make you so fucking happy,” Mike says, a vow to himself and a dare to the universe to fucking try to make it not come true.

Jeff grins at him, that stupid grin that’s the same as it was at eighteen, all that belief, that trust, in his smile.

“We’re going to be so fucking happy,” he corrects, and Mike rolls his eyes and pulls him back in.

* * *

There’s a chill in the air outside, but inside the house, it’s toasty warm. He’s made a fire in the fireplace, which Arnie’s enjoying, at least, sprawled out in front of it. Maybe it’s indulgent, just for him, but he figures he’s saving on heating costs. And his telephone bill, because that’s skyrocketed the last six months.

Like now, when he settles down on the couch, opens his laptop. He’s had a headache lingering all day, and this is definitely going to make it worse, but fuck it, he can deal.

He’s barely woken up his computer when the facetime call comes in, and he answers it to see Jeff there. Jeff’s peering at the camera, but then he—lights up, when he sees Mike. That’s never going to get old, Mike thinks. Knowing he’s allowed that.

“Hey,” Jeff says.

“Hey,” Mike replies. 

Jeff smiles, at just that. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

Mike rolls his eyes. “We talked yesterday.”

“Yeah.” Jeff shrugs. “It’s still nice.”

Mike swallows. Fucking Jeff.

“Tell me about Caden’s concert,” he orders, because that’s easier. Caden’s been getting into guitar recently, like the true LA kid he is, and Mike’s a little thankful that he’s a country away. Jeff’s beaming proudly though, as he recounts what Caden’s orchestra concert had been like, and Mike nods along with it. It makes him feel better, hearing about Jeff’s day; it still tugs at him, not being there, not knowing, but—he’s working on it. And Jeff seems happy enough that Mike feels better, the more Jeff texts.

Mike always has less to recount, because less is happening, up here, but he tells Jeff about his day, too—he’s been spending more time in the workshop, now that the boat’s away for the winter—then, barely looking at the screen, adds,

“Dad’s friend called, the one who owns that general store in town.”

“Oh?” Jeff raises his eyebrows. Waits.

“Yeah. To talk seeing some of my shit. I guess dad really got fed up with it filling up the house.”

Jeff grins. “That’s awesome, Richie. You gonna do it?”

Mike shrugs. “Don’t know,” he says, which they both know is a lie. He’s—excited about it, maybe. He thinks he could do it. He wants Jeff to keep looking proudly at him, anyway.

So, because he’s trying to be better, he adds, “Dr. Farella thinks it would be a good idea.”

Jeff nods. “Do you?”

“It might go really badly.”

“It won’t,” Jeff tells him, and Mike grabs onto that, to counter the ‘what if he fails again’ path that he’s been trying to keep at bay. “And even if it does, I think you can spare the money.”

“Nah, I’m gonna need you to keep me,” Mike retorts, and Jeff chuckles.

They talk for a little longer, shouting the shit about nothing, until Mike hears in the background Emersyn yell, “Dad! Can we go out for dinner?”

Jeff chuckles. “I guess I have to go.”

“Yeah,” Mike agrees. Neither of them move to hang up. It’s really fucking sappy, and Mike can’t bother to care. “I’ll see you in a few weeks,” he says at last. Jeff’s coming up with the kids for the second half of their winter break, after Christmas. Mike’s mom is lobbying hard for Christmas next year, but Mike’s not sure Meg’s going to be into giving the kids up. He doesn’t really care. He doesn’t need them here for a holiday, just—to be here.

“Yeah. Soon,” Jeff agrees, and gives a weak smile. His eyes dart off camera.

“Mike!” Emersyn drops into frame, and gives him a look of the sort she’s mellowed into, that makes it clear he’s on sufferance but that she’ll tolerate him for now. She’s only yelled at him once, when apparently he waited too long to text back and Jeff was moping. “Tell dad that we should go to In ‘n Out.”

“We’re not getting burgers, we’re eating here,” Jeff tells her. Mike hums.

“Depriving your kids of burgers, Cartsy?” he asks. Emersyn grins triumphantly. Jeff rolls his eyes.

“No burgers,” he repeats, but Mike’s pretty sure he’s wavering. “Rich—” he pauses. Emersyn rolls her own eyes, the same motion as her dad’s.

“Fine, I’ll go, you be gross.” She flounces away, with a final call of, “Burgers!”

Jeff shakes his head at his daughter. “I can make us burgers here!” he calls after her, because he’s always been a soft touch. Then he turns back to the camera. “I’ll—soon, yeah?”

Mike nods. Soon. And for now, he has this, Jeff on the other end of the phone, the computer, whatever other method of communication there is, like old times but so much better. He doesn’t need Jeff to breathe. Having him like this, though—it makes breathing better.

“Give your kids some fucking real food,” he tells Jeff, though, a little curt, “They’re going to need it to survive an Ontario winter.”

Jeff smiles, like he gets it. Of course he gets it. “Love you too,” he says, and Mike’s still not quite used to that, to how easily Jeff says it. “I’ve really got to go before there’s a riot.”

He puts a hand on the computer to close it. A few weeks, Mike thinks. A few weeks, and then they’ll be up here, and Mike’ll have Jeff in his home and his bed, and the kids running around filling the house with noise, and Jeff’s hands on him a little desperate like he gets after a long time apart and with his stupid smiles and morning routines and how he gets Mike through even the bad days.

“Jeff,” he says, before Jeff can hang up. Jeff pauses, probably more at the sound of his name than anything. “I love you.”

Jeff reacts full body to that, so easy for it, so delighted to hear it said. Mike shuts the computer before he can say anything else, and looks around the room.

A few weeks, and Jeff’ll be on the couch with him, quiet around the fire because they don’t need to talk, and Arnold will be at the hearth and maybe Emersyn and Caden will be in the other chairs, playing video games or on their phones or whatever. Mike thinks of ten years ago, of standing at Jeff’s wedding, vicious and in so much pain and anger.

Life’s definitely not fair. He’s sticking with that.

But sometimes, it’s pretty okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To continue the point about Doughty: If it bothers enough people and there are suggestions for someone who played on the Kings with Mike, is about the same age as Mike/Jeff, is conceivably a dumbass oblivious bro, and would still be in LA (probably retired) in 2025, I'm happy to change it--just lmk know in the comments or on Tumblr.

**Author's Note:**

> Liked it? Want to talk about it? Comment or come chat on tumblr at [ fanforthefics!](http://fanforthefics.tumblr.com/)


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